


Ready to Start

by blackmountainbones



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV), The Mighty Boosh RPF
Genre: M/M, Oblivious men being oblivious, UST is my kink, but it gets better, but it takes a lot of pain to get there, cigarettes and alcohol and self-loathing, endgame: everything is beautiful and nothing hurts, gratuitous partial and poorly-written boosh episode at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-12-30 06:52:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 31,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18310412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmountainbones/pseuds/blackmountainbones
Summary: The year is 2018. Recently divorced Julian Barratt tries to navigate life as a late-in-life gay man. Noel Fielding helps.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HAHAHAHAHA I took an eighteen month sabbatical from fandom to focus on my actual life. Now I'm back and more terrible than ever, dabbling in the forbidden fruit of RPS in a dead fandom. Let's see how many kudos I get.
> 
> Also, how many fics can I name after Arcade Fire songs?

Julian ducked out the back door of the pub to sneak a cigarette.

He lit it, inhaled, and sighed. He knew he wasn’t supposed to be smoking--had just quit, _again_ , in fact--but the forbiddenness of it made it taste even better than he remembered.

The pub door creaked open, interrupting the quiet reverie with which Julian had been indulging his bad habit. He pressed himself into the shadows a bit guiltily, trying to hide the cigarette in his hand up the sleeve of his jacket, but relaxed when he recognized his best mate and former comedic collaborator Noel’s distinctive hair.

“You’re supposed to’ve quit,” Noel murmured. The dim alley lights just exaggerated the strangeness of his features, made his face look like a Picasso painting, put together all wrong. Julian still thought he was beautiful, albeit in an otherworldly way. Noel Fielding just hadn't been meant to be human; the strangeness of his features was merely a compromise that made it possible for something as weird and wonderful as he was to live on Earth. When it was all over, when he was no longer bound by the laws of physics and biology, Julian mused, he’d finally be able to take the shape he’d been meant to have had all along.

“I did,” Julian said, taking another deep pull. “I started again.”

Noel didn’t chastise him for his yet-another failed attempt at quitting. Instead, he made a beckoning motion with his fingers. Julian passed him the butt, which he fit between his lips before inhaling.

They passed the cigarette back and forth for a while. The butt was soggy with Noel’s saliva, and Julian wondered if the tobacco tasted even sweeter, now that Noel had slobbered all over it. He’d never quite gotten the hang of smoking properly, unlike Julian, who had taken to it instantly; his full lips always stained the filter with lipgloss and spit. Perhaps it was a bit perverse, but Julian never complained.

The thought made Julian shiver as he tossed the butt behind the dumpster. He shouldn’t be thinking such things, he mused, just as he shouldn’t be hiding in this dirty alley and indulging Noel Fielding, his other bad habit.

“Cold?” Noel asked. He didn’t bother to wait for Julian’s answer before he wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close.

“A little,” Julian lied. He wasn’t, not really. The temperature was cool, but the air was too humid for it to chill, though he didn’t tell Noel that. He liked having him close like this, even though he knew he shouldn’t.

Julian knew better about a lot of things, but he did them anyway. That was just the kind of man he was, a sturdy Northern Englishman with a hearty appetite for food, drink, sex, and all other manner of vice. When he was younger, it hadn’t mattered much. Now that he was edging towards his 50th birthday, it was harder to ignore the damage done--the thickening of his waist from too much beer and rich food, the wrinkles that seemed more numerous everyday, the sordid affairs that had ended his marriage to the mother of his children.

He lit another cigarette, feeling a bit nihilistic about it all. One more, he figured, couldn’t make anything any worse.

There was a saying he’d heard before, that at fifty, you had the face that you deserved. He was a few months shy of his 50th birthday, but it was already glaringly obvious that he was not aging well.

He glanced over at Noel, who was 44 but looked 34. He hadn’t changed much in the last 25 years. Maybe he’d put on a bit of weight, but he wore it well; the extra couple of stone filled out his face and softened his features somewhat. He looked better than he ever had, unlike Julian, who had always looked old for his age.

For his part, Noel seemed content to keep him company. Unlike the rest, he didn’t try to talk Julian out of his melancholy, which he appreciated. He knew the others had good intentions, but he was sick to death of discussing the divorce and how he was feeling. There were only so many synonyms for _shite,_ and he’d long ago run through them all.

He shivered again. Noel ran a warm palm over his back. “You ready, Ju?”

Julian nodded, and followed him back inside.

 

The rest of the night passed in a haze of whiskey and beer. By last call, Julian was well drunk, on the verge of getting sloppy. In the morning, he wouldn’t remember much of the cab ride, nor the long walk up the narrow stairs to Noel’s tiny flat, though he would remember singing a medley of Phil Collins songs, complete with the drum solos, the whole way there.

“She’s an easy lover, she’ll take your heart but you won’t feel it! She’s the kind of girl you dream of, dream of keeping hold of--better forget it! Oooh, you’ll regret it!” Julian trilled in a exaggerated falsetto while Noel attempted unlock the door to his flat and shush his drunken friend at the same time.

Once they made it inside, Julian attempted to collapse on the couch, but Noel wouldn’t let him. “You’re too old for the couch, Ju. If I let you sleep there, you're just going to complain about your back all day tomorrow like you did last time.”

The couch, like many of the things in Noel’s apartment, had been chosen for the aesthetic more than anything. It was an attractive piece of furniture, antique woodwork reupholstered in a hideous screaming fuschia velvet, but it was also incredibly uncomfortable.

“It’s true,” Julian agreed, “your couch is evil. Possessed by a demon that curses everyone who sits on it with lower back pain. And upper back pain. And middle back pain--”

“I know,” Noel chuckled, “I’ve been thinking of getting it exorcised.”

“You should.” Julian let himself be led to the bedroom. There was a spare, but on nights like this, Noel always put him to bed in his own bed. It was a habit they’d started more than two decades ago, the very first night Noel had dragged him home after they’d spent the whole night drinking and cracking jokes at one another. By now, it was the kind of long-established habit that neither one of them seemed to be able to break.

He stripped himself to his pants and vest unceremoniously, still chirping the occasional refrain of Easy Lover as he did so. Noel rolled his eyes and hung Julian’s carelessly discarded clothing on a hanger before he changed into his fussy pyjamas, a matching set in a silky fabric.

“Dunno why you wear those ridiculous things,” Julian muttered as he pulled the duvet over his head. “So much better to sleep naked.”

“You’d better not try to take your kit off in your sleep again,” Noel warned, but there was no malice in it. The mattress dipped as he crawled into bed beside Julian.

Julian wanted to say something smart about that, but passed out before he could manage it.

 

It was pathetic, Julian supposed, that at nearly fifty, he’d not yet managed the business of taking care of himself. He took another sip of coffee, feeling wretched, while Noel flit about the kitchen, making eggs and toast and humming a strange yet sweet song as he cooked. Somehow, the previous night’s excesses hadn’t seemed to affect him the way they did Julian--his skin was clear and bright, and if he hadn’t bothered to do up his hair yet, the rumpled bedhead suited him, made him look younger and more casually beautiful than ever. Julian, on the other hand, was visibly hungover, skin grey and feeling uncomfortably tight, hair stuck to his skull in greasy clumps as he downed his coffee in desperate gulps in the futile hope that it would somehow help him feel more alive.

He hung around uselessly, knowing he should be getting home, but he wasn’t yet ready to leave and head back to his dingy apartment. After the separation, he’d moved into a small flat whose only redeeming quality was that it was cheap. It had also been one of the first places he’d viewed. Perhaps he hadn’t quite believed that his marriage to Julia was over--maybe if he had, he would have taken more care and gotten a nicer place, something that had the potential to feel like home instead of a temporary inconvenience.

But he hadn’t, so he preferred to linger here as long as possible, anything to avoid going back to the quiet and filth that would greet him when he returned. Noel’s place was small yet sunny, just like the man himself, and most of all, it was full of _him_. It was impossible to feel lonely here, and Julian had had enough loneliness to last a lifetime these last few months since the separation.

Eventually, Noel finished cooking and turned to the table, two plates balanced in his hands. He placed one in front of Julian, two sunny-side up eggs with perfectly runny yolks aside an artfully-cut apple. Julian speared the yolk and felt a strange satisfaction as the yellow stuff oozed over the plate.

Across from him, Noel ate quietly, with precise little bites. Occasionally, he looked up at Julian, who wasn’t so much eating as he was making a mess of the wholesome breakfast Noel had made for him.

Noel cleared his throat. “You got any plans for the day?"

Julian shrugged and took another sip of coffee. The warm bitterness washed over his tastebuds. It seemed appropriate somehow, as though the coffee tasted the way that he felt. He absentmindedly wondered if anyone had ever tried to make a tasting menu for matching food to emotions. But Noel was still watching him, waiting for a response, so Julian said, “Nah. Just planning to do some cleaning, maybe start working on the boys’ room. Their first visit will be next weekend, you know?”

Noel lit up. “Oh, that’s wonderful! I know you miss the brats.” He took another bite, as though waiting for Julian to elaborate. When it was clear that no response was forthcoming, he swallowed and spoke again. “Have you gotten any furniture for their room yet?”

No, he hadn’t--it was embarrassing to admit that in the three months he’d been living in the flat, the spare room was still empty but for a box of books and toys he’d brought from the house in a half-hearted attempt to make the place feel a bit more familiar. He hadn’t even bothered to unpack it, not that he’d’ve had a place to put anything, so it had stayed on the floor where he’d left it weeks ago. “Should probably get on that,” he mumbled, and went back to stabbing at his breakfast.

They sat at the table, the awkward quiet occasionally interrupted by the sounds of clinking silverware, chewing and swallowing. Eventually, Noel breached the silence. “I know that you’re not the best at this domestic stuff,” (Julian snorted, it was too true), “but I haven’t got much to do today. Maybe I could help you get the room together before the boys visit?”

He knew that Noel had good intentions, the best intentions, but it still stung. Julian should have known better than to take it personally, but he couldn’t help feeling that he was being called out for his failures as a human and a father. He raised his mug to his lips, but it was empty, and he set it down perhaps a bit more forcefully that was proper.

Truth was, he needed the help. He’d fallen into a weird state of fugue that made it impossible for him to get much of anything done other than drink and smoke, neither of which made him feel any better but had the benefit of pushing him a little bit closer to death. “Yeah,” he said grudgingly. “That could work.”

Noel stood and went to work clearing the table, dumping the rest of Julian’s half-eaten breakfast into the trash without bothering to comment on the fact that he’d barely touched it. “You want the first shower?”

“Nah, you can have it. You take longer to get ready.” Julian got up to put the kettle on and dump some fresh grounds in the French press. He was going to need coffee for this, and a lot of it.

“That is true,” Noel said. He ducked into the bathroom while Julian busied himself with the business of drinking so much coffee that he’d begin to shake.

 

The shower, Julian had to admit, had done him good. He felt marginally more like a functional human now that he’d washed away the alcohol and caffeine that had been seeping from his pores. He dressed in yesterday’s rumpled clothes after stealing a few spritzes of Noel’s cologne. It was woody and a bit floral, borderline pretty; it didn’t quite suit, but it was better than the alternative, which was eau de yesterday’s sweat.

The two of them stopped by the pub to pick up Julian’s car, then drove a few blocks over to his flat. He parked in front of the dingy building, which was older and more careworn that the other buildings on the block, feeling mildly embarrassed at how well the crumbling brick seemed to match the way he was feeling lately.

They made their way up the narrow and dark stairs until they reached the fourth-floor flat. Someone was cooking cabbage, and the whole building stank of it, dank and vaguely sulfuric. Not that his apartment smelled any better: it was ripe with unwashed clothing, the pile of unrinsed empty beer bottles fermenting in the sink, and the many overflowing ashtrays that littered the place.

He probably should have cleaned before letting Noel come over, but it was too late now to pretend that he didn’t live like this.

Noel wrinkled his nose. “Well, it’s a bit like being back in Edinbugh, innit.” Julian’s cheeks burned with a rush of shame. It was a bit pathetic that he was still living like he had in his twenties, when he’d relied on Noel to take care of things like the shopping and the cooking. Later, he and Julia had always had someone in to take care of the more tedious chores, and now that he was on his own, he had no idea how to do any of it.

“Been thinking of getting a cleaner,” he muttered as he emptied one of the ashtrays into the overflowing garbage.

“Prolly wouldn’t be a bad idea.” Noel, always so bad at sitting still, was gathering the mess of bills and documents strewn haphazardly across the kitchen table into a neat pile. “Looks like you could use the help.”

Julian led him down the long and dark hallway to the boys’ room. It looked even more forlorn than he remembered, stained carpet with bare walls that had once been white but were now a dingy almost-grey, the box of toys and stuff sat conspicuously in the middle of the room.

Noel’s eyes narrowed, considering. “It’s a bit small, but we can work with that. Bunkbeds, probably…” He trailed off and slid down to sit cross-legged on the floor, pulling his phone from his pocket and pulling up the Ikea website.

Julian joined him on the filthy carpet, where they spent the next couple of hours selecting furniture for the boys’ room, stuff like bunkbeds with a bright red metal frame, a colorful carpet in an abstract print to cover the stains in the carpet, some whimsical shelves and a small wardrobe for their things. It wasn’t much, but Julian had to admit that Noel had an eye for this kind of thing, and all the color would certainly brighten up the dingy little room.

“I’m about to submit the order. Need anything else?” Noel asked.

“God, do I,” Julian sighed, unsure of where to start. He’d only brought the bare minimum with him, reluctant to let himself settle in too much lest Julia decided to change her mind and ask him to come home. After three months, he had to admit that it seemed less likely and more like wishful thinking. He was a mess, but Julia seemed happy enough without him.

He couldn’t blame her--after all, he knew that he had been the reason their marriage had fallen apart. She’d been good and kind and faithful, all the things that Julian hadn’t.

The truth was, Julia had always been too much woman for him to handle.

He’d heard that most men like him had known that there was something different about them from childhood. And if he was being honest with himself, Julian would have to admit that it had certainly been true--though he’d been popular enough, he’d never quite felt like he fit right anywhere, at least not until he’d met Noel. Then, the realization _why_ had hit him all at once.

They’d been drunk on the couch in the Edinburgh apartment, building the framework for what would become The Mighty Boosh. Neither of them had known it then, but they were going to be something amazing, unlike anything the world had ever seen. All they knew was that they were funnier together than apart, and when Noel had reared his head back and cackled at something Julian had said, he’d been overtaken by the impulse to snog his best friend silly. It had terrified him, so Julian did what he did best and slipped into a monthlong sulk, putting as much distance as possible between them in the small space.

It had all come to a head when Noel shrank his shirt. It was an ugly thing, made of terrible tacky polyester, but it had been a gift from an ex-girlfriend and the only tangible proof of his heterosexuality he had left, so Julian had freaked. He hadn’t stopped yelling until Noel had thrown a pile of flyers in his face, when the absurdity of the situation had hit him full-on: two grown men fighting like a married couple over the laundry for no other reason than that Julian was in love with this strange and wonderful man who had come to mean everything to him but was too repressed to tell him.

They’d got over it, and gone on to great things together--a radio show, a television series, an international comedy tour--but sitting on the floor like this in this awful apartment gave Julian a terrible sense of deja-vu. Years had passed, two decades of them, but it seemed that very little had changed since Edinburgh, including the awful longing that Julian had always been too afraid to name.

“What do you think of these for the curtains? Ju? Julian?” Noel’s question interrupted his thoughts. He shoved his phone in Julian’s face and made him look at some awful brightly-patterned thing.

“They're terrible,” Julian said truthfully. “Don’t they have anything in a sensible sienna?”

“Ugh, you can’t do the whole place in _brown_ , Julian,” Noel griped.

“Why not?” Brown was a sensible color. Neutral, unlike the riot of clashing colors Noel always favored. Noel had a theory that if things clashed awfully enough, they actually complimented each other. It suited him, but not Julian.

“I don’t want to get a migraine just from sitting in my living room,” Julian said, as if that was an explanation.

“How about… green?”

“Hmm, guess I could go for a sensible olive drab,” Julian conceded.

“Olive drab? That’s like as close to brown as you can get without actually _being_ brown,” Noel griped, but he added the green curtains and a few matching decorative throw pillows into the cart anyway.

He selected a few more items while Julian roamed around the apartment, throwing dirty clothes into garbage bags for the laundromat to pick up. After awhile, the place actually began to look a little less depressing. Noel even passed on the number of the cleaners he used, and Julian set an appointment for later in the week.

Maybe, he thought, with a little care, this apartment would start to feel something like home. It was a terrifying thought.

Noel, of course, noticed. “You all right there, Ju?”

“I’ve never lived alone before,” Julian admitted. His voice came out a little bit cracked.

Somehow, Noel knew exactly what he needed. He wrapped Julian up into a full-body hug. It was a little awkward--Noel was so much shorter and smaller than him that it shouldn’t have felt nearly so comforting, but Julian was thankful all the same. One of his hands crept up the back of Noel’s neck to stroke at the hair on his nape. “You’re a good friend, Noel. Better than I deserve.” It was more true than he wanted to admit, but Noel had been there for him, coming to his rescue after the separation. Yet nearly a decade after Julian had walked away from Noel and the Boosh in an attempt to dedicate himself completely to being a husband and a father, Noel had picked up his call on the first ring and accepted Julian back into his orbit like he’d never left.

Noel’s voice was muffled where he was busy nuzzling his face into Julian’s chest. “You’re the only one who thinks that, you know. You deserve all the good things.”

Julian wasn’t so sure about that, but he let Noel hold on to him all the same.

 

Between the decorating and Ikea furniture assembly, Julian managed to keep busy for the next several days. The apartment was still a shithole, but at least it was starting to look less like a crappy bachelor pad and more like the apartment of an actual functional adult human, albeit one who still wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing most of the time.

That was, at least, until he attempted to assemble the bunkbeds. Try as he might, Julian had no idea how it was all meant to fit together. He stared at the instructions, and when that didn’t work, he tried cursing. No matter how loudly he yelled at it, the thing stubbornly refused to assemble itself.

At that point, he did the only thing he could do: he called Noel. “You have to help me,” he insisted, and Noel, ever the supportive friend, showed up two hours later with an armful of paintings, all Noel Fielding originals.

“I thought the place needed a bit of personality,” he explained, and hung them in the boys’ room. Julian wasn’t sure that Arthur and Walter were quite old enough to appreciate the portraits of pop legends like David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, but he thanked Noel all the same.

While Noel wasn’t much for tools, his art school education hadn’t been completely useless--he was good with reading diagrams. Between the two of them, they managed to assemble the bunkbeds in only a couple of hours. Julian bought him dinner, curry and naan from the local Indian spot, instead of saying thanks; luckily, Noel knew what he meant without him having to say so.

Julian served them dinner on the plates Noel had picked out for him. He had to admit that Noel seemed to know his taste better than he did: he liked the faux-wood lacquered surfaces, and eating off of plates that matched made him feel a little more like a functional adult human. He even poured the beers into the fancy beer glasses Noel had insisted he buy, just to make the occasion seem a little more festive.

He proposed a toast to their successful Ikea furniture assembly. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” Julian said as they clinked their glasses together. “How the hell could you see the different threading on all those screws?”

“Dunno,” Noel said as he took a sip. “Guess my eyes’re still young enough to see up close.” He regarded Julian a bit suspiciously. “Don’t you have reading glasses or something?”

“It’s true--the armour of my youth has gone to rust,” Julian sang, remembering one of the songs from the show. His voice was hoarse--he’d failed yet another attempt to quit smoking last night and had blown through nearly a full pack, though he’d thrown out the rest that morning, disgusted with himself for having failed so spectacularly.

“That was Howard,” Noel said. “Howard’s not a real person, just a character you played on TV. Besides, it suits you, you know.”

It was easy for him to say, considering that he hardly looked a day over 35. “You don’t have to lie to me, Noel. I do look in a mirror sometimes, hard as it might be to believe.”

“No, really. You got the right kind of face for it, all rugged like,” Noel was looking at him strangely. “You look…. Distinguished.”

Julian helped himself to some more tikka masala. “I look like a geography professor with a drinking problem who’s only hanging on for the tenure.”

“A well sexy one at that. Probably would have half the girls crushing on you, and some of the boys too.”

Julian made a face. “Too young for me. Too many hormones and too much drama. I’m more into post-pubertal adult men these days.”

Noel laughed. “Finally, you opened the closet door!”

“Why are you laughing?” Julian griped. “I’m a Northern man, you know this isn’t easy for me…”

“Well, it’s only taken half a century….”

“Wait, you mean you _knew_?”

“God, Julian, I’m not the most observant bloke out there, but I’d’ve had to've been blind and deaf and dumb not to notice that you always went after the blokes back then.”

Julian wished he hadn’t thrown his cigarettes in the trash. He could have done with one, or ten, right about now. “I tried not to, you know. That’s why Julia….” he trailed off, not sure what to say, or how to say it.

Noel busied himself with his curry. “Yeah. I figured that might have had something to do with it.”

“Why do I bother telling you anything?” Julian sighed melodramatically, hoping that it would be enough to diffuse the serious mood. “You already know everything.”

Noel ignored his attempt at a joke, and his hand stole across the table to cover his. “Julian… I’m proud of you. It can’t be easy to tell a secret you’ve kept for so long.”

“Some secret. Everybody knew but me,” Julian grumbled.

Noel’s hand squeezed tight around his. “Oh, you knew. You just didn’t want to admit it, and that’s something else entirely.”

Julian supposed he had a point. “I don’t know how to do any of this.” He brought the fingers of the hand Noel wasn’t holding to his mouth and rubbed at his lips as though he held an invisible cigarette between them.

“Do what?”

“Any of it. How to be gay.”

“I suppose it’s easy enough. You’ve been doing it as long as I can remember, anyway.”

Sure, Julian had slept with a not-insignificant number of men. He knew enough about how that worked, how to relax his throat around a cock and to use plenty of lube. But he was nearly 50 years old, and had never had a relationship with a man, only sordid affairs. “I’ve never had a boyfriend,” he admitted, unsure how much to tell Noel.

“It’s just like having a girlfriend, except with more beard burn,” Noel said.

“Wait, how do you know this?”

Noel rolled his eyes. “You’re an idiot, Julian. How is it that you’ve known me nearly 3 decades and you still don’t know that I go both ways?”

“I’m gay, not stupid,” Julian griped. “No one who dresses like you do could possibly be completely straight.” Noel had confided in him more than once about his experiments in art school, which had been limited to the occasional snog and odd mutual wanking session. Julian hadn’t thought much of it back then, but now he wondered if Noel hadn’t been trying to reassure him that they would still be friends even if Julian ever came out. “I just never knew that you actually, I don’t know, _dated_ a man.”

Noel shrugged. “More than one, actually. You weren’t around much for a while there.” His tone was matter-of-fact, devoid of any accusation. It didn’t make Julian feel any less guilty.

Julian couldn’t deny that he hadn’t been around very much at all for the better part of a decade. Something in him ached with the knowledge that Noel had had a whole other life about which he’d known nothing at all. “I’m sorry. I should have been.” Instead, he’d chosen to keep his distance when it had gotten to be too much, having Noel around all the time. Sure, he’d slept with his share of blokes, but none of them had been a threat to his relationship with Julia the way that Noel had been: he’d been able to leave their beds without wanting _more_.

 

But since he never had, Noel eventually called a cab and headed out the door with a vague promise to stop by sometime during the boys’ visit. While his presence had staved off the loneliness, his absence made Julian feel more alone than ever, and he puttered around the apartment in an attempt to burn off his restless energy. When that didn’t work, he decided to call Julia.

When she picked up, Julian realized that he didn’t have much of anything to say to her. Instead of trying to say anything meaningful, he prattled on about the improvements he was making to the apartment. “The boys’ room is coming together,” Julian said, because he wasn’t sure what else he should.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Julia said. “I was worried that we’d have to push the visit back another month for a while there.”

Julian, who knew exactly how badly he’d been behaving lately, didn’t try to defend himself. “Well, I had some help. Noel forced me to do the Ikea thing.”

“Oh?” Though it was a question, Julia didn’t seem surprised.

He could tell she was curious about the recent rekindling of their friendship, but Julian decided to ignore it. “Yeah. We put together the bunkbeds today.”

“Bunkbeds?” Julia sounded skeptical.

“Yeah, the room’s a little small, but cozy. I think they’ll like it.”

“As long as you’re sure they’re safe, I guess.” Julia didn’t sound convinced, but she let it slide. “Just make sure that Walter gets the bottom bunk. He still falls out of bed sometimes.”

It was just a casual comment, but it made Julian ache for everything he was missing. “I miss you guys, you know.” He took a deep breath. “All of you.” Just in case it wasn’t clear enough, he added, “Do you think--”

She interrupted him before he could complete the thought. “Julian. We’ve talked about this.” She sounded a little exasperated. “I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to any of us. We both deserve to be with someone who can make us happy. The boys deserve to have two parents who are happy, not just trying desperately to hold it together for their sakes.”

Julian swallowed. It was true, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. They’d tried to do that for ten years now, and had failed miserably. Mostly because as much as he’d tried to, he hadn’t loved Julia, not the way he was supposed to, not enough to stop sleeping with men every chance he got. It was 2018, not 1918, for chrissake’s; Walter and Arthur deserved better than a cowardly closeted homosexual for a father. “I know you’re right, but I hate everything about this, just so you know.”

“It gets better,” Julia said, but he wasn’t so convinced.

They chatted for a while longer, mostly about the twins’ upcoming visit. When they hung up, Julian craved a cigarette so badly he could already taste it. But he’d decided to give quitting another try, so he brewed a cup of chamomile tea. It tasted like grass and didn’t do much to help, but he drank it anyway.

 

Julia dropped the boys off that Friday. She lingered about for a few minutes while Julian gave his family the grand tour, though it didn’t take long, small as the flat was.

“It looks good,” she’d admitted, if a bit grudgingly. “Not what I expected.” She lingered by the door, watching as Walter and Arthur unpacked their bags and rummaged through the toys that Julian had brought with him.

A surge of pride welled up in him, and Julian nodded his agreement. “The building’s a bit grotty, no? But Noel was a big help in getting the place together. Really kicked my arse into gear.”

Julia gazed at him knowingly. She, more than anyone, knew about Julian’s tendency towards sloth when he was overwhelmed, had done the work of kicking him off his arse when he got stuck more than once over the years they’d been together until he’d gotten so mired in his misery that the only thing she could have done was make him leave. “I’m glad to hear the two of you kissed and made up.”

It made Julian sputter. “We didn’t--it’s not like--”

“Relax, Julian,” she said, patting his arm gently in an attempt to comfort him. It was awkward, as if she did not know how to touch him now that they were no longer husband and wife. “It’s just a thing people say.”

Julian supposed he should have known. His blustering response seemed to hint that perhaps there was more truth to it than not, and he was a little embarrassed to have given himself away so easily.

But Julia seemed nonplussed. Perhaps she had known all along that Julian’s feelings for Noel were not precisely platonic, though she’d never said as much.

Eventually, she kissed the boys goodbye, and Julian walked her to the door, feeling a little out-of-sorts as they said goodbye. He’d watched the boys a thousand times--for all his shortcomings as a husband, he knew that he’d been a good dad, but that didn’t stop him from feeling anxious and acutely aware that he’d always had backup before. Now he was on his own.

He ducked back into the room to watch the twins squabble over which Legos belonged to whom, a soft smile on his face. He’d missed having his children close, and though it was terrifying to have them here, he was hit by a wave of love so intense it almost frightened him--he loved Walter and Arthur ferociously, always had. Even before they'd been born, Julian had loved the idea of them; he’d always wanted to be a father, and he secretly considered the twins to be his greatest accomplishment. He'd heard that having children was like learning how to let your heart walk outside of your chest, and as the years went on, he found he was inclined to agree. He’d do anything to make them happy, up to and including marrying a woman who he had not loved the way he should have, only to try and raise them right, in a stable home with both a mother and a father.

He settled down onto the floor and gathered a handful of Lego blocks, acutely aware that though he’d failed to keep their family together, he should at least try to be a good paternal role model in the time they had together, paltry as it seemed. “Now, Walter, Arthur, isn’t it more fun to play together?”

Their identical faces regarded him with matching expressions of disappointment.

“You’ve gone wrong, Dad,” Arthur said. It was easier to tell the twins apart now--sometime in the last three months, Arthur had gotten his hair cut, while Walter preferred to leave his wavy hair long enough to get in his eyes. “It’s better when we build our own.”

“Yeah, so I can smash his when he’s not looking,” Walter agreed. He kicked at the structure that Arthur had been making with a little bit too much glee as he yelled, “Sabotage!”

Julian, who was old enough to know better, couldn’t help chuckling as he helped them pick up the scattered blocks. The three of them played together on the floor, building a fortress until it was time for dinner as if the last three months’ separation had been nothing at all, and Julian’s heart swelled with a soft surge of paternal pride.

 

As happy as he was to have his boys visit, Julian was feeling a bit frazzled by Saturday afternoon. He had a renewed appreciation for Julia, who had taken on the duties of primary caretaker in stride; the last three months had only enforced Julian’s tendency towards solitude, and he was no longer used to sharing his space with such small and energetic creatures.

So when Noel showed up at the door, Julian was inordinately grateful. “Thank God you’re here, the little buggers have been running me ragged,” he said. It was only half an exaggeration.

“You’ve only had them for twenty-four hours,” Noel observed. He handed Julian the bags he’d been carrying, which turned out to be full of groceries; Julian accepted them gratefully though he wasn’t quite sure what he was meant to do with them.

Arthur and Walter were happy to see him; it had been years since they’d had a chance to spend more than a few minutes with their favorite almost-uncle.

“I like your jacket,” Walter said. It was an ugly thing, made out of some highly-reflective material that hurt Julian’s eyes every time he looked at it. “Does it glow in the dark?”

“I like it,” Arthur agreed. “Makes you look like an alien.”

“I am an alien,” Noel said as he scooped them up into a hug. Though the boys had started to outgrow such expressions of affection, Noel had such an easy way with children that they allowed it. He was, Julian supposed, a bit childish himself, had never quite grown out of the wonder and whimsy of childhood the way that most people did.

He watched for a while, charmed by the easy rapport between his best friend and his sons, feeling a bit like an arse for having denied them each others’ company for so long. If only he’d gotten over himself and his stupid earlier…

Noel interrupted his inner monologue with a cheeky grin. “Penny for your thoughts, yeah?”

Julian blinked, coming back to himself. “Nothing.”

“Typical Julian,” Noel tutted and shook his head. “C’mon, I bought you some groceries. Let’s get dinner started and let the twins get into trouble where we can’t see them.”

Julian followed him into the kitchen. He emptied to contents of Noel’s bags. “I’m not sure what to do with all this,” he admitted. He and Julia had always had had someone by twice a week to do the cooking, and now that he was on his own, he didn’t see the point in cooking for one when it was just as depressing but a whole lot less effort to drink most of his meals.

“What would you ever do without me?” Noel wondered aloud.

“Die, probably.” It was not so much of a joke as Julian intended, and Noel regarded him curiously.

“Well, we can’t be having that,” he muttered, then tasked Julian with chopping the potatoes and carrots as he set about preparing the roast, walking Julian through the process as he did so. “Hey, I said to chop those veg, not mangle them!”

“I _am_ chopping them,” Julian said, a bit snippy. He'd always been rubbish at taking criticism.

Noel stepped behind him, putting his hands over his to gently guide him. “Try holding the knife like this,” he suggested, placing Julian’s index finger over the back side of the blade while guiding the rest of his fingers around the handle. “Not too tight now. That should give you a little more control, at least.” He kept his hands over Julian’s for a few minutes as they practiced together, not letting go until he was satisfied with that his technique had improved.

It was a little awkward, but Julian had to admit that the new position made for much more precise cutting. He managed to get through the rest of the vegetables and an onion without making too much of a mess of things. Noel painstakingly demonstrated the proper way to arrange the roast, and they shoved the whole mess into the oven before turning their attention back to the twins.

The four of them spent the next few hours coloring in the books Noel had brought with him. At first, the boys were aghast at Noel’s refusal to use the proper colors for anything, but after a while, inspired by Noel’s unorthodox methods, they too began coloring creatively, using blue and purple for skin tones and red for the grass. Everyone teased Julian for his staunch adherence to the proper way of doing things.

“Jeez, Dad, don’t use up all the brown. Somebody else might want to use it,” Arthur teased.

Julian eyed the page he was coloring. He thought he’d done a rather brilliant job of coloring the bears in various shades of brown himself. “This one’s not brown,” he protested. “He’s more a raw umber, really.”

“Don’t tease your father,” Noel said, looking up from the zebra he’d been coloring in shades of pink and yellow. “He’s doing his best. It’s not easy for him. He’s allergic to color, you know.”

The boys laughed as though that was the most hilarious thing they’d ever heard, and though he was the butt of the joke, Julian chuckled along with them.

Their jovial mood was interrupted by the blaring of the kitchen smoke alarm. As soon as it sounded, Julian hopped to his feet in sudden panic. When he opened the kitchen door, a cloud of smoke escaped.

 _Fuck._ All of a sudden, he realized he’d forgotten to set a timer on the roast. Julian raced through the smoky kitchen to the oven in an attempt to rescue their dinner, but there was nothing to be done for it--it was charred and unappetizing-looking, completely inedible.

“Mate,” Noel asked him as he opened the windows to air the place out a bit, “have you ever considered taking a cooking class?”

Julian decided that might not be such a bad idea, after all.

 

The rest of the weekend was rather uneventful, though Julian did suffer a minor shame when Walter and Arthur told Julia about his failed attempt to cook a nice dinner. She didn’t say anything about it, but she did shoot him a rather pitying look as she shooed the boys out the door.

The following week, he signed up for a class entitled “A Beginner’s Guide to French Food” at a local community center. He hadn’t been expecting much, but after a couple of classes, he was surprised at how much he was beginning to enjoy the whole thing.

He liked cooking, Julian decided. He’d never bothered much with it before; there had always been someone around to do it for him, and he’d been all too happy to help with the eating. He’d never before realized how creative cooking could be, and he took to it the way he’d taken to cigarettes and jazz music.

Not only that, he liked the class. The teacher was a tall and sturdy woman, a bit neurotic but with a charmingly loony laugh. His classmates could only be described as _characters_ , ranging from bored housewives to other single men such as himself, and he was heartened to discover that he was far from the most inept student.

Something in the hectic pace reminded him of the Boosh. The instructor had a bit of a Bob Fossil vibe going on, mostly due to her tendency to sing nonsense songs to her ingredients during demos. _Choppy choppy choppy, onions too, I am gonna make a stew out of you._ His youngest classmate, a quiet woman who looked barely old enough to have graduated from high school, seemed to be determined to modify all the recipes they learned with marijuana butter, just like Naboo would have. She’d befriended a student named Demetrius, who enabled all her experiments. Demetrius was portly and balding and covered with a thick layer of Mediterranean body hair that made him resemble a kind of Greek proxy for Bollo, the ape who was Naboo's familiar. Julian quickly developed a bit of a crush on one of his fellow students, a younger, effeminate man who had a fine bone structure, good hair, and a bit of a lazy streak that reminded him of Vince Noir.

And though Julian did good work, he was rarely noticed or commended for his efforts. The other students tolerated him, but it was obvious they considered him a bit weird and uncomfortably intense, just like the rest of the Boosh had considered Howard.

He’d set out to learn to cook, not to write, but after each class, he started scribbling down fragments and ideas. As much as he tried to make them into something new, they stubbornly refused to be anything but the Boosh. Despite that, he kept at it; he’d finally broken his years’ long streak of writer’s block and he’d learned long ago that he would never understand why the muse wanted what she wanted, but as long as he gave it to her, she would keep supplying him with plenty of material.

Perhaps that was the reason he hadn’t written much of anything for so long--he’d been too focused on trying to write the kinds of things he thought he should, live the life that he was supposed to, that the muse had stopped showing up. His adherence to his vision had stifled his creativity, but little by little, as he began to relax and learn how to play again, the inspiration followed.

He supposed that he had Noel to thank for that. After all, Noel had been the one to suggest the cooking class; more than that, Noel was something of an eternal child who had never forgotten how to play. The more time Julian spent with him, the more he remembered how much fucking _fun_ life could be, if you stopped worrying about what you _should_ be doing or trying to make sense out of things. He still missed Julia and the boys something awful, but to his surprise, he hated his life--and himself--less.

 

Noel dragged him out to the local pub again that weekend. Julian had forgotten exactly what they were celebrating, but it was some kind of private party, hosted by one of Noel’s artist friends.

Two drinks in, he’d already lost Noel to the madding crowd. Julian wandered about the bar a bit, feeling out-of-place in his trainers and cords. No one tried to approach him, which was just as well; he wasn’t sure that he’d have much to say to anyone here. They were all so much younger than he was, and everyone seemed to be dressed in the same kind of hipster uniform, tight jeans and flannel and haircuts that tried too hard at not trying too hard.

When he finally spotted Noel, he was whispering to a woman with a bleached-blonde mullet and numerous facial piercings. Julian decided it was probably for the best not to interrupt, and scanned the crowd. In the corner near the loo he noticed someone who looked as out-of-place as he felt. The man noticed Julian looking, and tilted his head in a gesture Julian recognized.

He made his way over to where the man was standing. “Can I buy you a drink?”

Up close, it was obvious that he was a bit out of his league, quite a bit younger and attractive in a carefully-cultivated way, wearing a casual suit that probably cost more than every item in Julian’s wardrobe put together. But instead of telling Julian to fuck off, he put his nearly-empty glass down on the table, the ice cubes clinking loud enough to be heard over the din of the party. “Sure.”

“What will you have, um…” Julian trailed off uncomfortably, unsure how to go about asking him his name.

Luckily, he seemed to understand what Julian meant. “I’m Aaron. And I’ll have a gin and tonic. What about you?” he asked, following Julian to the bar.

“Julian. And an ale.”

Aaron chuckled a bit, as if charmed by Julian’s awkwardness. “How did you find out about this party, Julian-and-an-ale?” he asked while they waited for their drinks.

“Here with a friend,” Julian said, handing him his drink before taking his own. “Not really my scene, but I didn’t have much on tonight, so I figured, why not?” Aaron nodded and sipped his drink but didn’t respond. “How’d you end up here? You don’t quite look like you fit in with this crowd either.” It had made him seem safe to approach, considering that neither did Julian, though for a different reason.

“Kind of,” Aaron said. “I own a small gallery in Chelsea. More on the business side of things.”

“You look like it,” Julian said, smiling a bit as though letting him in on a joke.

“So what do you do?” Aaron asked, obviously sizing him up.

“Me?” Julian shrugged a bit awkwardly. He rarely had to introduce himself, and he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. “Well, I’m an actor and a comedian. Quite a famous one, really.”

“You? Famous?” Aaron snorted into his drink. “Never would have thought that.”

“Why not?” Julian asked. He was rather curious despite himself.

“You don’t look like one of those Hollywood types.” He gave Julian an appraising look, and Julian knew exactly what he meant by that. He was pudgy, badly dressed, and obviously aging badly.

“I’m not,” Julian admitted. “More Leeds and London.”

“Well, that makes sense. You’ve got a bit too much _character_ for LA.”

It wasn’t quite a compliment, but it made Julian feel a bit more confident about trying to chat him up. “I have many characters. Part of the job, you realize.”

Aaron laughed, a real laugh, not just trying to be polite. “So what have you done?”

“A little of this, a little of that. Mostly The Mighty Boosh. You may have heard of it.”

“No way! I used to love that show. It was all the rage when I was in college. Haven’t seen it in years, though.” He sipped at his drink, gazing at Julian flirtatiously over the rim of his glass. “You don’t look like you do on television. Though to be honest, I don’t remember it much. I think I was drunk every time I watched it.”

“That’s probably the best way to watch it,” Julian agreed. “I was drunk when I wrote it.”

Aaron laughed. “You really _are_ funny.” He lifted his glass to his lips and smiled in an obvious invitation.

Before Julian could take him up on it, Noel was suddenly at his side. He was drunk already, and when drunk, Noel was prone to spontaneous outbursts of affection. True to form, Noel flung a possessive arm around Julian’s waist and pressed a sloppy kiss to his cheek before he could stop it. “Julian, you have to meet--Oh.” He looked back and forth between Julian and Aaron for a moment before the realization struck. “Um, this is a bit awkward, innit?”

Julian shrugged him off and laughed politely. “Noel, this is Aaron. Aaron, this is Noel Fielding.”

Aaron offered his hand, which Noel shook a bit cooly. “You look just like you do on TV.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Noel said, unwrapping himself from Julian’s waist and turning to face him, obviously ignoring Aaron. “Hey, if you need me, I’ll be over at the bar. Come find me--I’ve got to introduce you to some people. You’ll love them.” He leaned in and kissed Julian again before slipping back into the crowd.

Julian rubbed at his cheek self-consciously. He could still feel Noel’s lipgloss on his skin, a bit tacky and weird. “Well,” he said, “That’s Noel. He’s a bit much, but he’s my best mate.”

“Best mate, you say,” Aaron repeated, as if trying to clarify something in his own mind.

“Yeah. We’ve known each other forever,” Julian explained. Perhaps he should say something more, but he was feeling a bit too confused by the whole situation to figure out what that could be.

Aaron seemed to take him at his word. They chatted a bit more, and when Aaron excused himself and explained that he had an early meeting tomorrow and should really head out, Julian found himself mentioning his cooking class and inviting him over for dinner sometime. Surprisingly enough, Aaron gave him his number, and Julian felt a bit of the old thrill he’d gotten from a successful pull. Maybe, he thought, he could do this gay thing after all.

He turned and headed to the bar where Noel was waiting, surrounded by a crowd of hip-looking people. He always did attract the most beautiful people, Julian mused, like attracts like, and all that. It was probably for the best that he’d found Aaron, who was plain like Julian. After all, a man who looked like a hungover geography professor as much as he did could never hope to compete with Noel’s admirers.

 

The meal he’d chosen for his big date was one they’d learned in his cooking class, chicken thighs simmered in a creamy mustard sauce with shallots and sage. He roasted potatoes in the chicken fat and prepared a simple salad as sides, and though he’d made each dish before, he was inexplicably nervous that he would fuck it up somehow.

Noel sidled up next to him, his hip brushing Julian’s in the small kitchen as he stole one of the roasted potatoes and stuffed it into his mouth. Julian tutted at him in a mock scolding, but Noel just laughed and assured him that it looked so delicious he couldn’t possibly be expected to control himself. Julian supposed that the enthusiasm with which Noel stole another bite boded well for the rest of the meal, and he was struck with a wave of appreciation for this man, who always saw what Julian was capable of and pushed him to take advantage.

Noel again complimented the chef, playfully poking his belly, which was big enough to swell at the seams of his shirt. “Besides, looks like you’ve been sampling the goods a bit yourself.”

“Ugh, isn’t it supposed to be healthier to cook at home instead of getting takeout all the time?” Julian complained. “Me, I just keep getting fatter.” He’d always been one to indulge his appetites, which he supposed contributed somewhat to the situation. At least when he’d been living on takeout, it had been easier to ignore them until his hunger overpowered the anxiety he felt about having to talk to real human being to place his order.

“It’s that fancy French food you’ve been learning. You should have taken a class in vegan cooking or something if you were concerned about your weight,” Noel said, matter-of-fact.

Julian grimaced. “Gross. I though the whole point was to learn to cook something that I’d actually eat.”

Noel’s answering grin was a little bit cheeky. “Well, if you didn’t eat the stuff you cooked, you’d certainly lose weight.”

Julian reached over and grabbed a generous handful of Noel’s arse. It was fuller than it had been the last time he’d done this nine years ago during the closing act of their final stage show. “At least I’m not the only one who’s gotten fat in his old age.”

“Julian!” Noel squealed, and swatted at him. “I’m not old yet. And I’m certainly _not_ fat.”

Julian flashed a predatory grin and groped him with two hands for good measure. “No?”

Noel flushed and bit his lip. Julian was suddenly aware that he was standing in his kitchen with his hands on his best mate’s arse. He and Noel may have been very good friends, but as unconventional as their relationship was, Julian was uncomfortably aware that he had to have crossed a line. He took a clumsy step backwards and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

Noel was still looking at him, cheeks still flushed with pink, one of his slightly off-kilter canines still pinching his lip. Julian thought that he should say something to break the tension, but he turned to the stove and stirred the sauce, even though it had not yet begun to thicken, because he didn’t know what else to do.

A few minutes later, the sauce had thickened up nicely. Julian busied himself with plating the meal, grateful for something to do with his hands that didn’t involve putting them on Noel.

Noel took a bite, and Julian watched him closely, trying to gauge his reaction. He swallowed a mouthful of wine to wash it down. “It’s good, Ju.” He took another bite, and Julian felt a sudden rush of pride.

“You really think so?”

Noel took another bite and hummed happily. “Yeah, I do. Aaron’s a lucky guy. Hope he knows enough to appreciate all the trouble you’re going to for him.” Though his words were perfectly kind, there was something in them that hinted at a bitterness beneath.

“It’s not much trouble at all,” Julian admitted. “I rather like cooking, I think.”

“You’ve come a long way since the last time you tried to cook for me,” Noel said. He took a sip of his wine, expression glazing over a bit as he reminisced.

Julian grimaced, remembering how spectacularly he’d botched that simple meal. Even though only a few short weeks had passed since he’d burnt the roast Noel had so patiently helped him prepare, he was much more confident in the kitchen. It was hard to believe he’d been so hopeless. “You were the one who told me to do a cooking class.”

“I was right, wasn’t I?” Noel’s eyes were sparkling with something like pride. It made Julian’s heart swell a bit.

“You always are,” he said, taking a taste for himself. The food had a rich taste, and he was somewhat surprised he’d managed such a successful effort on only his second attempt at the recipe. “It’s more fun than I expected.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Julian watched him take another bite, his eyelashes fluttering in obvious pleasure. “Half the class is absolutely mad. You’d love it.”

Noel listened raptly as Julian regaled him with tales from his cooking class--the woman who’d started a grease fire when they made steak and chips, the man who’d had a breakdown over a botched French onion soup. He laughed at all the right parts; Julian had always loved making Noel laugh, maybe even more than he’d liked anything.

“God, Ju, I haven’t laughed that hard in ages. My ribs hurt.” Noel was clutching his stomach in a way that had nothing to do with the food. “You should write a bit about it.”

“I have been writing something,” Julian admitted. It had been a long time since he’d written anything, and while it was still raw, he thought that it might have some potential. “It’s not much, yet.”

“No way! You gotta let me see. Can’t drop that kind of bomb on me and not share.”

Julian pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up the document he’d been working on before handing the device to Noel. Noel read for a moment, then looked up at Julian, expression a bit shellshocked. “It’s the Boosh.”

“Yeah.” He hadn’t meant to do it; he’d sat down to write something completely new, but as the story began to take shape, it had become more and more obvious that the Boosh was perfect for the story he wanted to tell.

“They’re all here,” Noel murmured. “Bob Fossil, demented restaurant owner, Naboo as the head chef--”

“He keeps accidentally dosing people with his potions, which makes a good jumping off point for the plots,” Julian added helpfully. “I made Vince the host, but I don’t know if he’d be better as a bartender…”

“No, no, I like the idea of Bollo as the bartender,” Noel said. “It’s perfect. Vince is probably too lazy to do any real work, anyway. Host suits him, I think.”

“And Howard’s the dishwasher,” Julian continued. He’d been a bit proud of that bit. Dishwasher was the most thankless job in any kitchen, though it was a necessary one. “I thought it was just pathetic enough to work.”

Noel’s eyes scanned the document. Occasionally he chuckled or made contemplative sounds as he read. Julian tried to eat but the butterflies in his stomach crowded out his appetite. He was surprised at how desperately he needed Noel’s approval on this. Every time he tried to take a bite, his attention kept drifting back to Noel.

Finally Noel broke the silence. “Do you think that we could do it?” he asked.

“I don't know. Maybe. Depends on Mike and Rich and Dave, really.” Julian wasn't sure what they would say. He'd just begun patching things up with Noel; he had a long way to go with the rest of the guys. But in all honesty, he couldn’t imagine making anything out of it without them.

Noel took a sip of wine, considering. “It might take some convincing, but I think they miss the Boosh as much as we do.”

Julian’s heart stuttered--Noel had never before admitted that out loud. “You think so?” His voice was a rather breathless in a way that belied his desperate hope that maybe it would be possible to fix things enough for everyone to work together again.

“Yeah,” Noel said. “Yeah, I do.” A long beat of silence passed before he added, “You know, I don’t think they ever wanted it to end. We were the ones who couldn’t figure out how to make things work anymore. Everything else was collateral damage.”

He was right, Julian knew, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept. He could still remember those last few frantic months with an acuity that made it seem as though it had happened last week instead of nearly a decade ago. Lines had been drawn, allegiances been made, and he’d been too caught up in himself to bother with any of it. He’d let Noel pull Mike and Dave and Rich on his side without any resistance. It had seemed fitting at the time--Noel, who was beautiful and kind and loved so easily, deserved everything, and Julian, who was not any of those things, deserved nothing at all. “I know I never said as much back then, but I’m sorry--”

Noel cut him off. “There’s nothing to apologize for. I’ve already forgiven you, a hundred times over.”

But Noel’s easy forgiveness did nothing to assuage Julian’s guilt; in fact, it seemed only to make it worse. It unsettled him to be forgiven so easily--he’d been so awful back then, so determined to prove that he needed neither Noel nor the Boosh to be successful, that he felt like he _should_ have had to grovel and beg to be worthy of Noel’s mercy.

He didn’t quite know how to explain himself. Instead of trying, he reached for the bottle of wine, and topped off both their glasses with a shaking hand. Noel raised his glass. “To the Boosh.”

“To the Boosh,” Julian repeated, knocking their glasses together a little too vigorously. A bit of wine spilled out to wet his hand, and he sucked his fingers clean before sipping to the toast. Noel watched him, his blue eyes burning in a way that Julian hadn’t seen in a decade. He _knew_ that look, halfway between awe and desire, and it ignited a long-denied need.

Before he could give in to it, he cleared his throat. “How did you do it?”

“Do what?” If Julian didn’t know him so well, he would have thought Noel was playing coy.

He shrugged. “How did you get over it so easily?”

“I didn’t think I ever would,” Noel admitted. He was fidgeting with his wineglass, wrapping his fingers around the stem and releasing them, one by one, over and over again. “But then you came back, and you still hurt enough for the both of us. It seemed stupid to stay mad, when you were still so mad at yourself.” He didn’t say it, but he didn’t have to--Julian heard it all the same. _Maybe you could learn to forgive you if I did it first._

Julian was humbled, but he still didn’t know if he could. There was too much to regret. But he supposed he had to try. “I--” he started, stopped, then tried again. “I never meant for it to hurt you too.” He’d been too busy trying to hurt himself, to give himself what he deserved, and their friendship had been too intense, too dangerous, too much of a threat to the life he’d been trying to make happen with Julia. He’d been too close too many times to giving in, and the only way he’d been able to make it stop was to make it implode.

“It did,” Noel said, but there was no malice in it. It was a statement of the facts, nothing more. “I felt it every day, you know. For a while, I didn’t even know who I was without you.” Julian nodded, because he’d felt the same. It had taken years, and even then, his life had been sharply divided between _Noel_ and _everything after._ Once he’d finally begun to heal, a Noel-shaped scar had remained, prone to phantom pains the way an amputee still sometimes felt a missing limb. “I don’t know if I ever managed it. God, I was so young when I met you, just a kid really… Sometimes I wondered I’d sprung from your head fully-formed, like some kind of awful homunculus.”

“I never could have imagined something like you.” Julian felt the truth of the words as soon as he said them. “We were more like long-lost Siamese twins, separated at birth.”

Noel cracked a sad smile. “It really felt that way, didn’t it.” He took a long sip of his wine, staring at Julian the whole time. His gaze made Julian feel exposed, as if Noel had peeled back his skin to see the blood and guts and viscera beneath, so he turned awkwardly to his plate. The food was cold, but he forced himself to swallow it down.

They finished their meal in silence. Noel helped him clear the table, muttering an excuse about the late hour and calling a cab before Julian had a chance to serve the apple tart he’d made for dessert. It wasn’t like him to pass up sweets, but instead of calling him out on it, Julian turned to the sink and busied himself washing the dishes so he didn’t have to watch him leave.

Before he did, Noel wrapped his arms around Julian’s waist and rested his pointy chin on his shoulder. “I hope tomorrow night goes well.” Though his words were perfectly pleasant, Julian had the impression that he didn’t quite mean them. “I want a lot of things for you, Julian. But most of all, I want you to be happy again. Like you used to be.” Something warm and wet pressed against the fabric of his collar before Noel turned and walked toward the door.

It wasn’t until Julian undressed for bed and saw the stain on his shirt that he recognized it for what it had been--a kiss.

 

His date with Aaron was turning into a disaster.

He’d accidentally scalded the cream sauce, and every bite tasted a bit burned. Somehow he’d also managed to cork the wine _and_ break a wineglass. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the conversation between them was stilted and boring. By comparison, the previous night’s test run with Noel had gone much more smoothly, and Julian couldn’t help wishing that he’d never invited Aaron over at all.

But it was his first real date since the divorce, so he supposed he should see it through. After all, one couldn’t expect their first date in over a decade to go smoothly. Perhaps, he reasoned, if he got this one out of the way, the next would be easier.

“The chicken’s good,” Aaron said. Julian saw it for what it was: less of a compliment and more an attempt to break the awkward silence.

“I burned it a bit,” Julian said, because he was incapable of accepting a compliment that he hadn’t really deserved. “I’m still new at this whole cooking thing.”

“For a bloke who hasn’t been doing this long, this was rather ambitious.” He gave Julian an appraising look. “I’m a bit flattered. Would have been easier to take me out if you wanted to impress me.”

“Are you?” Julian asked. “Impressed, I mean.”

“To be honest, I’m waiting for dessert before I make that judgement,” Aaron said. It sounded a bit suggestive, and Julian wondered if this date was going better than he’d assumed. Aaron certainly sounded interested.

“We’re both adults here. We can skip dinner and go straight for dessert if you want.”

This, Julian had to admit, was more familiar territory. He understood how to get a bloke into bed well enough. It was everything else--the wining and dining, the casual conversations, that tripped him up. He leaned forward, opened his mouth, and pulled Aaron into a kiss.

Sex came easily after that. If Julian didn’t manage to last long enough to get Aaron off before he did, he at least made up for it with a long, teasing blowjob. Afterwards, they ate the apple tart in bed, naked. Aaron fell asleep easily, whether from the orgasm or the sugar crash, Julian was not certain.

It took him a long time to sleep himself. He kept tossing and turning, annoyed by the crumbs that had fallen in between the sheets and Aaron’s occasional snore. He couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow he’d been stuck in a time loop, that the man asleep beside him was meant to be someone else. Julian edged closer to Aaron's sleeping body, lying a hand on his side to reassure himself of the identity of his bed partner, wondering if he hadn't already done something he'd regret.

 

Julia dropped the twins off the following afternoon for their monthly weekend at Julian’s. The boys hugged him, then slipped off into their room to inspect it for changes while he and Julia lingered over cups of tea in the living room.

“You’re really settling in, aren’t you,” she said, gazing around the room. It was adorned with several of Noel’s paintings, new ones he’d made especially for Julian, depicting his favorite obscure jazz musicians in muted shades like a desert at sunset. He loved them.

“Guess so,” Julian agreed. “It took some time, but I’m starting to like it here. Might even renew the lease when it comes up.”

Julia scrunched her nose, and Julian felt a pang of nostalgia. It was a cute expression, one of his favorites to see on her face. He laughed. “Not the nicest building, but the rent’s cheap for the area. Besides, you know me--once I’m comfortable somewhere, it’s hard to make me leave.”

“Do I ever.” She looked at him fondly. “You’d still be back at the old place trying to convince yourself you’re straight if I hadn’t made you move out.”

The truth in it didn’t make it ache any less. He could have said something cruel, but this tentative truce between them was too new to risk it. Instead he just shrugged.

“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” she continued. “Arthur and Walter... “ she hesitated. “They’re at that age, calling everything ‘gay’.”

Julian froze, his mug halfway to his mouth. By mutual agreement, they hadn’t yet broached the subject with the twins--they’d told them that they were divorcing, but had never really explained why. Julia had been kind enough to let him tackle that subject when he was ready. He hadn’t yet been.

“I’m doing my best,” Julia continued, “but you know how boys can be at that age about listening to their mother.” She swirled the liquid in her cup thoughtfully. “You don’t have to, but I thought it might help if they knew… Maybe they’d think twice about using it as an insult.”

He knew she had a point. This was how divorced people did things, trading off responsibilities based on their relative strengths and weaknesses. It didn’t make it any easier. “I--I’ll think about it,” he said, knowing that he would.

She nodded, and put her cup on Julian’s beat-up coffee table before getting to her feet. “Boys, come on and give your mother a kiss goodbye!”

Arthur and Walter complained a bit, but they did as she said. They were at that phase that all little boys went through: desperate to prove they were no longer mama’s boys but secretly still attached to her. Julian knew they missed her during these weekends, even if their visits lasted only a few days. He loved them desperately, but knew that a father’s love could not quite compare.

He managed to avoid the conversation until Sunday dinner. He’d been busy plating the roast, which turned out much more successful than his last attempt, thanks to his cooking classes, when he’d overheard Walter saying “Eeew, that’s so gay.”

With an air of feigned calm, Julian bussed the plates over to the table though he was shaking inside. “Walter, don’t say that,” he admonished. He desperately wanted a cigarette, half-wishing that that his latest attempt at quitting hadn’t stuck so well.

“Everyone says it, Dad. It’s no big deal,” Walter said flippantly.

“Maybe it’s not such a big deal to a straight person.” He took a deep breath, desperate not to fuck this up. “But it’s a big deal to me.”

“Why do you care so much anyways?” Arthur asked.

Julian rubbed his lips. It was a nervous habit he’d taken up once he’d decided to lay off the fags for good. “You know I love you very much. But I had to move out. Did your mother tell you why?”

He knew the answer already, even before Walter spoke. “Mum just said you two couldn’t be married anymore.” The boys were looking at him curiously.

He tried to look both of them in the eye at the same time. It was harder than he expected. “We couldn’t be married anymore because--because I’m gay.”

Arthur and Walter looked more confused than ever.

“That doesn’t make any sense, Dad,” Arthur said, while Walter blurted out, “How can you be gay? You were _married_. To _Mum_. She’s a _girl_.”

Julian pinched his lips again. The craving for a fag was stronger than ever. “It’s--it’s complicated. Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out why things aren’t working.” He sat, silent, strange, unsure how much he could say in a way that two ten-year-olds would understand.

The twins were silent for a moment. Finally, Walter broke the silence. “Did you love her?” He looked like he had just found out that he’d been lied to, and Julian supposed he had, though he’d never meant to.

He’d been prepared for a lot of things, but Arthur and Walter’s matching expressions of betrayal. Perhaps he should have expected this, all those years ago when he’d started fooling around on Julia. He’d been naive to think that he could get away with it, and he sighed, a long, shuddering thing. “I did, for a while. But maybe not the way I was supposed to.” He pursed his lips, swallowing something that felt suspiciously close to a sob, desperate to explain himself. “When you are young, and you hear people say… things, things like gay people are bad or weird or wrong, over and over, well. You start to believe them. Especially if there’s no one around to tell you otherwise. To say that it’s OK to, to be the things you are. And then maybe you do things you’re not proud of. Because you’re trying very, very hard not to be that bad thing, the bad thing you don’t want to be. But no matter how hard you try, it’s never enough. You can’t change it. So maybe you have to do other things that you don’t want to. Like move into a crappy flat in London where your sons only visit one weekend a month. But you do it, because you want to teach them to be proud of who they are. To not have to feel like they have to hide it. And if I stayed, well, I’d still be hiding.”

The words had come out in a rush, rambling, ineloquent and only barely coherent. He hoped they would understand. Hoped to God he and Julia had been good enough parents to teach them that, at least.

His boys, as always, surprised him. “You still love us, right?” Arthur asked in a small voice.

“Madly.” Julian smiled at them, only a little bit sad. “You two’re still the best things to ever happen to me. If I could--if I had to--do it all again, I wouldn’t change a thing. As long as I still get to have you…. It would be worth it, every moment.”

“We still love you too, Dad,” Walter said. His voice was serious beyond his years.

If Julian got up from the table to capture them in a big bear hug, well, it was only because it was easier to hide the fact that he was crying. Their supper grew cold as they embraced, so Julian packed away the leftovers and the three of them ate ice cream sundaes for dinner, instead of waiting for dessert. He figured they deserved something sweet to wash away any possibility that they would taste more of the bitterness of life than they needed to just yet.

 

Later that night, after Julia had picked up the boys with a knowing smile, Julian called Noel. he picked up on the first ring, and Julian had never before been so thankful that Noel, despite his carefully cultivated coolness, was too honest to be indifferent when it mattered.

“What’s up, Ju? How was your visit with the boys?”

Julian took a sip of the chamomile tea he’d taken to drinking every time he craved a smoke. It was too hot and burned going down. “It was good. Julia just picked them up.”

“Feeling a bit like an empty nester, then?”

 _If you only knew,_ he thought. “I guess you could say that.”

He heard Noel fidgeting with something on the other end of the line. He was always like that on the phone, had to find something to do with his hands, incapable of too much stillness. “You sound sad. Did something happen?”

The words flooded out all at once. “Noel, I--I told them.”

“Told them what?”

Julian blew on his cup of tea, watching as the steam wafted away. “I heard Walter call something _gay_. Julia’d warned me they were at that stage, but…”

Noel made an indistinct soothing sound, but waited for him to finish his thought before saying anything.

“But it still didn’t make it any easier to tell them... tell them that I’m--gay.” He’d said it aloud a few times now, but it didn’t make it any easier to admit.

“It went OK, though? I mean, Walter and Arthur are good boys, but even good boys can be little arseholes sometimes--”

Julian cut him off. “Yeah. It went fine, I think. They were a little confused for a minute there, but then I told them I still loved them and they said they still loved me, so I cried a little and then we all ate ice cream for dinner, so I think we’re OK. I hope.”

Noel chuckled a little. “That’s actually kind of cute.”

Julian rolled his eyes, even though he knew Noel couldn’t see. “You’re such a good friend, Noel. Nice to know that you can listen to me pour out all my existential angst and still laugh at me.”

“That’s exactly why we’ve managed to stay friends so long.”

Julian couldn’t argue with that. “God, what a deep and beautiful friendship we have.”

Noel’s answering laugh was deep and full-throated. It took a full minute for him to get himself under control, and even then, the occasional half-chuckle escaped him. “But for real, you’re good, yeah?”

“I--I think so. Probably,” Julian mused. His chamomile tea had finally cooled enough to drink. The taste still made him grimace a bit--he didn’t think he’d ever get used to it. He couldn’t deny that it had a calming effect, so he kept drinking it even though it reminded him of boiled grass. “I just thought it would be easier.”

“That what would easier?”

“Coming out. I thought it would be a one-time thing,” Julian said, still sipping his tea. “No one told me that you’d have to keep doing it. You come out to your wife, your best friend, your kids, the vicar… Everyone you know, eventually there’s this moment where you end up having to tell them, ‘Oh, guess what? By the way, I’m a massive gayist.’”

“In my experience it’s mostly been the other way ‘round,” Noel admitted. “Just the way I dress, the makeup and stuff… Everyone assumes I’m queer. I have to keep reminding them I like fanny too.” Something crinkled in the background, then a chewing sound came through. Julian wondered what Noel was eating. Probably something sweet, maybe one of those fancy French cookies he’d taken such a liking to lately. “You could try going glam. That might make things easier. We could call up the BBC, see if they still have those jumpsuits from that We Got the Funk bit…”

“Ugh, no thanks,” Julian said. “I think I’ll stick with the whole ‘hungover geography teacher’ thing I’ve got going. Someone once told me it was well sexy and I’d have no trouble attracting younger men. Turns out he was right.”

“Oh,” Noel said. More chewing sounds came through the line. “So your big date was a success then?” He was trying, and failing, to sound casually disinterested.

“Define ‘success’.”

“I mean did you shag him, you dense bastard.” If he’d been going for a tease, it had come out a bit too harsh.

Julian didn’t want to admit it. He had a suspicion that Noel wouldn’t be as happy for him as he pretended to be, and it seemed suddenly important not to hurt his feelings. “Maybe. A gentleman never tells.”

Noel was quiet for a moment too long. “You totally shagged him, you berk.” His tone was playful. Just as Julian had predicted, it sounded a little too forced.

“It was… fine. I don’t know if I’ll see him again, though,” Julian admitted. Aaron had been nice enough, but there was no spark--their night in bed together had filled him with only a fraction of the passion that Julian felt the night before, when he’d invited Noel over to taste-test his cooking. Now that he’d decided to give this gay thing a go in earnest, Julian suspected that his friendship with Noel would be the standard by which all his potential suitors would be judged. It was well fucked, especially considering they’d never so much as kissed unless they had enough plausible deniability to laugh it off as a joke later, but Julian didn’t care about that.

After all, he’d already fucked his whole life over trying to pretend that he and Noel were just friends like anyone else. If he was going to do it again, he might as well do it right.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you Ladeedah for stepping up and beta'ing this mess. This would not nearly be what it is without you.
> 
> Warnings: canon-typical use of the R-word, smex
> 
> See if you can peep that Always Sunny reference! (The author has a bad habit of mashing up sitcoms. This is no exception. They apologize, but they will not stop.)

Despite Julian’s misgivings, Aaron seemed to like him well enough. He came over again a couple of nights later, and from there they settled into a comfortable enough routine, meeting for dinner or a drink then somehow finding their way to bed.

Julian’s libido, which had been conspicuously absent during the early months of his separation, awakened full force. He’d almost forgotten how much he loved sex--he and Julia had often gone months without it, and if Julian had sought out men during their dry spells, he’d never quite managed the degree of shamelessness required to truly enjoy himself. He’d always been wracked by guilt and the feeling that somehow or another, he would be found out and his family torn apart.

It had taken years to happen, but it happened all the same. Julian’d been filming the second season of Flowers, and perhaps the isolation of the remote Northern English village where they were shooting made him careless. He'd gotten on with one of the locals, a charmingly neurotic American expat who wrote humorous essays about his dysfunctional-yet-still-loveable family and his many phobias. They’d met at the only pub in the tiny village, where Julian had been charmed by the expat’s wit and his owlish appearance. He’d immediately bought a book of his essays, and when he’d seen him next, Julian had told him how much he loved the story about how he’d managed to quit smoking and told tales of his previous failed attempts. One thing led to the next, and before he knew it, Julian had fallen into a full-fledged affair.

He’d had his share of clandestine encounters, but they’d been purely physical, just two blokes having it off together. The only other exception had been his years-long emotional affair with one Noel Fielding, which, as much as he may have wanted it to be, had never been more physical than the kisses they shared onstage. In fact, what had gone on between Julian and his expat had been starting to remind him of his relationship with Noel before everything went to shit.

When it finally happened, it happened like this: Julia arrived on location for a surprise visit. She’d shown up at the pub just in time to see Julian and his expat locked in an embrace. Afterwards, Julian thought perhaps she’d suspected something and had come North confront him. The timing had been altogether too perfect to be a mere coincidence.

Of course, in the aftermath, Julian lost his expat, his wife, and primary custody of his children. It had taken months before he’d even been able to think about sex, and he supposed that Aaron was attractive and likeable enough to keep fucking. They fell into a relationship easily, though Julian wondered if it were more of a habit than a relationship at times.

While Aaron and Julian had been dating for a while now, Noel never seemed to warm up to him. It was unusual for Noel to be so callously cool to anyone, unless they were someone Julian was dating. He wondered how he could have forgotten this about Noel, until he remembered that whenever he tried to wrap his head around those particular memories, his brain hurt.

Tonight was another such night. Noel was doing his best to ignore Aaron in the busy pub, which was normal enough, but instead of flitting about and ingratiating himself with his many admirers, he stuck close to Julian’s side. Julian didn’t protest the little gestures of affection he sprinkled on him as he knew from long experience that Noel was a handsy drunk, though he was certain that Noel was pretending to be drunker than he was.

Aaron seemed to take it all in stride, even teasing them a bit about being the new Harold and Maude. They’d made the joke a hundred times themselves, but from Aaron, the familiar quip backfired, making Noel huff and ignore him. Julian had an uncomfortable sense of deja-vu--he hadn’t seen Noel go so possessive in years, but he recognized it.

He suffered in silence, sipping at his beer until it was empty enough to justify excusing himself to the bar, Aaron close on his heels as he walked. They were still waiting for the bartender to take their orders when Noel cornered him. “I need to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I said, I need to talk to _you,”_ Noel repeated, flashing a glance in Aaron's direction.

“Excuse us for a minute,” Julian said, shooting an apologetic look at his boyfriend before following Noel out to the smoking deck. He’d been quit for weeks, but the sweet smell of tobacco from the couple smoking in the corner was making him crave a fag something fierce.

Noel, who always seemed to notice exactly what Julian needed, bummed one off of them. Julian was impressed by the easy charm with which he’d done so; he had never learned not to be. When Noel lit the cigarette and passed it to Julian, the filter was already soggy and stained by his lipgloss. It tasted better than Julian remembered. Not for the first time, he wondered if Noel had anything to do with that.

They sat and smoked for a few minutes in silence. Julian was beginning to wonder what he was doing out here; Noel had wanted to _talk_ but wasn’t saying much of anything at all. He took a final drag and crushed the cigarette in the soggy ashtray. “So what was it you want to talk about?”

Noel glared at him as though he’d expected Julian to _know_. “We've barely even touched your draft,” he said bitterly. “Honestly, I'm beginning to doubt that you even want to.”

“How can you say that?” Julian stuck his hands in his pockets defensively.

“You never have time for me anymore!” Noel was tapping his foot and shaking his head, looking like nothing so much as a toddler about to throw a tantrum. “Whenever we hang out, _he's_ always around. How are we supposed to get anything done on the script with _him_ around all the time? He has no idea what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do, so nothing gets done!”

“Oh.” Julian felt a bit daft. Perhaps Noel had a point; he had gotten a bit carried away with his burgeoning romance, if you could call it that.

“You can be so damned selfish,” Noel said, still sulking like a spoiled child.

“Wait, _I’m_ selfish?” Julian wished he’d thought to bum another cigarette. He chanced a glance at the far end of the smoking deck; the couple who had been sitting there just a moment ago had left. He and Noel were alone now. Julian had the sinking feeling that nothing good could possibly come of it.

“Ever since the divorce, our friendship has been about _you_ , what you need. It’s exhausting,” Noel complained. “This didn’t used to be such a one-sided thing.”

Julian opened his mouth to protest. “I don’t think--”

“Well, maybe that’s the problem!” Noel’s voice had gone all high-pitched; his eyes narrowed, impatient, blue. “You never think. You just take!”

Julian took a deep breath, trying to be reasonable before responding. “You never tell me what you need.”

“You never fucking _ask_.” Noel was biting on his lower lip, which trembled between his teeth.

Julian focused on his breathing and counted to ten. “Well, what is it you want, then?”

“You should _know_.”

Julian, who had been trying so desperately to keep his cool, was dangerously close to losing it. He and Noel hadn’t had one of their big blowouts in nearly a decade, not since the last seething days of the Future Sailors tour, which had ended the Boosh and put their friendship on pause. “Noel,” he said, speaking slowly and deliberately, pushing the words out between his teeth, “obviously I have done something to hurt you. I do not know what that is. Maybe I should, but I don’t.” He let out a loud and long-suffering breath. “I am trying to fix it. But I can’t do that if you don’t _tell_ me what’s wrong.”

Noel froze, his big blue eyes blinking rapidly. He crossed his arms over his chest. The gesture made him resemble an overgrown child who was desperately trying to hug himself. Julian pushed his chair a bit closer, close enough that he was able to wrap an arm around Noel’s shoulder, and Noel burrowed his face into Julian’s shoulder. His breath was warm and wet on Julian’s skin.

“I just… it’s stupid, but...” he said, trailing off, then starting again. “When you said you were writing more Boosh, I thought… that maybe things would go back to the way they used to be. Before everything went bad and you went away.” His mouth opened and closed, as if he had something more to say, but no words came.

The old guilt hit Julian in the chest so hard it knocked the breath out of him. He remembered that terrible year, the excruciating Future Sailors tour, how they’d let everything unravel slowly, like a sweater, the seams that held it together fraying more day-by-day. How by the end of it, the two of them, who could hardly stand to be apart, could hardly stand the sight of each other.

Julian had never hated _him_ \--more hated himself enough to want to destroy every beautiful thing that reminded him of Noel, up to and including the man himself. He’d been in love with Noel maybe even since the very first night that Noel had invited him in for tea. In hindsight, Julian realized, it was clear he hadn’t been joking when he’d said that Julian would never be able to leave. And he hadn’t, not until that love had metastasized and become malignant, all because Julian had always been too much of a coward to risk upsetting the electric chemistry on which the Boosh had depended.

And even after all that, he hadn’t been able to stay away. Noel had welcomed him back easily, letting Julian lean on him in the months since the separation. Julian didn’t know how to thank him for it, so he let the fingers of the hand on Noel’s shoulder smooth the long hairs at the nape of his neck and hoped Noel would recognize it for the apology it was. “I came back, you know,” he whispered into Noel’s hair. The strands, stiff with hairspray and that familiar almost-floral cologne, tickled his nose, and he sniffled a bit.

“Almost,” Noel said. He was kind enough not to mention the obvious, that Julian had only done so when the circumstances forced his hand. He’d been lost, adrift, and gone to find Noel, who had always been there when he’d needed him. “But I want the rest of it back, too.”

His voice cracked with an off-note that Julian recognized as longing. The sound stirred a long-dormant place in Julian, one that was prone to making rash promises that he wasn’t sure he could keep. “Come over tomorrow. After my cooking class. We’ll get drunk and write all night.” He didn’t mention that they’d always done their best work drunk off their tits and faffing about in Julian’s bed. He didn’t have to.

He could feel the way Noel’s lips spread into a half-smile against the skin of his neck. “All night, Ju? You mean that?”

“Well, maybe until two or so. I’m an old man now; I need my beauty sleep.” He made a grotesque face at Noel and preened.

That broke the tension. The two of them collapsed into each other, laughing wildly.

Behind them, the door to the smoking balcony creaked open. When he looked up, he saw Aaron watching them, a contemplative expression on his face as he watched the two men.

Noel noticed. He did not say goodbye but he did press the back of his hand to Julian’s forehead for a moment before composing himself, standing up, and walking to the door.

After he’d walked back into the bar, Aaron sidled up to Julian and asked, “What was that all about?”

“Just some artistic differences on a project we've got going.” It didn't feel like the whole truth, but it was as much of it as Julian could figure.

“Oh?” Aaron looked a bit skeptical. “I thought you said you guys hadn't worked together in years.”

“We haven't,” Julian said. “Can't really talk about it much yet, it's too early. But we got some ideas, just need a chance to sit down and write it.” He thought he should maybe tell Aaron more, but he didn't. He had always been like that, possessive of his work and unwilling to share too much before it was close to being finished. The only person he'd ever felt comfortable enough to share the rough drafts with was Noel--the two of them practically shared a brain, and he trusted Noel completely not to fuck it up.

Aaron, who was used to working with artists and eccentrics, didn’t push. Not that he seemed too interested in the first place.

 

Noel, who was habitually late, showed up at Julian’s flat the next night at exactly 8:30, only minutes after Julian arrived home from his cooking class. He was carrying a case of Carlsburg, the awful beer they’d always drunk back before they’d been able to afford the good stuff, and a huge black portfolio case for his concept sketches. It was so familiar that it made Julian ache with nostalgia.

Julian welcomed him in with a long and desperate hug, then heated up the food he’d brought home from class: a tarte de Provence and scalloped potatoes. Though Julian had to admit that he’d done a pretty good job, the praise Noel heaped on the food was so effusive that it made him feel a little uncomfortable.

“Ugh, it’s not all that. I cut the potatoes too thick,” he said, trying to deflect a bit.

“Seriously, Ju?” Noel took big bite just to spite him. “They’re delicious. You just hate it when anyone tries to compliment you about anything.”

“If you stopped trying to compliment me all the time, we could skip all this awkward shite and go back to making fun of each other. I like that better.” Even as he said it, he could feel his ears burning.

Noel stuck out his tongue. A huge gob of half-chewed food sat in the middle of it. Julian should have been grossed out, but he was a bit charmed instead. Perhaps if all Noel’s compliments were equally disgusting, he’d find them a lot easier to take.

They bantered back and forth as they ate. Julian recognized it for what it was--a kind of creative foreplay before they got down to the real business of writing. It made his whole body sing electric, something he hadn’t felt in years. This, he remembered, was why he and Noel worked so well together. He’d worked with many different people in the last ten years, and nothing else had ever come close. Whatever he and Noel had, it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. He knew that now.

 

The red display of his alarm clock read 2:38 am. Julian groaned and tossed his beer onto the pile of empties that littered his bedroom floor.

“Don’t tell me we drank the whole case,” Noel moaned. He was lying flat at the foot of the bed. No matter were Julian tried to put his legs, Noel was in the way.

Julian belched. “No, I think there’s like six left.”

“God, we’re getting old, ain’t we?” Noel was at the philosophical stage on the drunkenness scale.

“I think there’s a law against drinking eight beers on a Tuesday after 40,” Julian said, trying to swallow another burp. It didn’t work. “We’ve broken it.”

His comment made Noel laugh maniacally. “Call the police! We got a drunk and disorderly to report!”

Julian kicked him, just a little bit. “Oi, what’s that for?” Noel squawked, scrambling upright. He’d tried to move too quickly, gave up, and flopped down on his side.

Julian rolled his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep. You were in the way.” His hair was all in his eyes, and he could barely see. His hands seemed too far away, so he tried to blow it off his forehead, then gave up when it became clear that it was impossible.

Noel managed to crawl up the bed so at least he was slumped the right way ‘round this time. He threw an arm over his eyes to block out the light. “Ju, you ever think of comin’ out? Like, publicly?” His words were tinged with a Cockney twang in the way that meant he was well pissed.

Julian piled the pillows into a careful stack, the laid down beside him. “Yes, and before you ask, soon, and no, I don’t want a coming out party.”

“I was thinkin’,” Noel slurred, “maybe it’d be the perfect excuse for a Boosh reunion.”

“Stop that. It’s a terrible idea. Don’t ever think again.” Julian, drunk himself, slumped down into the stack of pillows he’d just made. Noel wriggled over to rest his head on them, close enough that his disheveled hair was tickling Julian’s ears.

“No, not a party. Just… invite the boys out to celebrate your coming out. We could use it as an excuse to do something incredibly tacky, like go to a male strip club. It’s mad. Our friends will love it.”

Julian ignored him. “Gross,” he scoffed. “If I’m going to be forced into having a coming out party, we are going to a tasteful jazz joint and drinking pretentious wine.”

Noel's hair was still prickling his ear. It was annoying, so Julian tried to blow it off rather unsuccessfully, which made Noel squeal. “What are you doing?”

“Your hair is a Medusa,” Julian explained. He did it again just to hear Noel made that sound again and smirked. “Made from a thousand tiny snakes, all trying to crawl into my ears.”

“That’s brilliant, Ju.” Noel yawned, his big teeth flashing white. It made him look even more like an ancient Greek snake goddess. “We should write it into the show. Vince uses one of Naboo’s potions as a hair tonic and ends up with snakes growin’ out his head.”

Julian lifted himself onto his elbow with a grunt. He might actually be too drunk to move, he realized, just as he collapsed. His head landed on Noel’s chest, which was warm and smelled like yeast, and he decided to just stay there for a bit. “D’ya really think they’d come? Even Rich?”

One of Noel’s hands tangled in his hair, brushing his bangs off his forehead so that Julian could actually see him properly. “Of course they will. Why wouldn’t they?”

Julian let himself be pet, scrunching his eyes shut in pleasure. He let out a rumble that eventually became words. “It seems like such a silly reason to come all that way.”

“It’s a great idea,” Noel insisted, still petting him. “We have you a party ‘n they got to come. It’s the perfect excuse. They’re dicks if they don’t. And I mean, our friends are dicks, but not big enough dicks to not show up and congratulate you for liking dicks.”

Julian was too pissed to argue; Noel’s arguments had a certain drunk logic that made sense if you didn’t think about it too much. “If you want a party, you’ve got to be the one to plan it. I’m not responsible for any of this.”

Noel’s voice was muffled against the pillow. “It’ll be easy. I’ll do all the hard work, you just ‘ave to call the guys and tell ‘em to show up.”

“I take it back,” Julian huffed. “That _is_ the hard part.”

With obvious effort, Noel unstuck himself from the pillows. His eyes were blue and bleary, but still impossibly big. He blinked a few times, as though he was having trouble focusing. “It’s not that hard. You jus’ like makin’ a big deal of things.” 

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Julian groaned, yanking on the duvet until he managed to pull it out from under his friend. Noel kept looking at him, so he dumped the blankets over his head to make him stop.

Soon enough, Julian could hear soft snores sneaking out from under the covers. He lay down on the other side of the stack of pillows, letting the sound lull him to sleep.

 

Julian woke up with a terrible thirst, cursing himself for having forgotten to drink even a glass of water between any of the many beers he’d drunk the night before.

He was getting old, he mused. Beer shouldn’t be giving him such an awful hangover. Then again, he was no longer in the habit of drinking eight at a time.

He glanced over at Noel, who was still asleep. His fringe was slicked back, exposing his forehead, making him look unguarded, and Julian lingered for a moment, just to watch the way his features, normally so animated, had gone still. It was cliche, but Noel asleep was at peace in a way he so rarely was awake.

Eventually, his bladder forced him out of bed. Julian left the sheets reluctantly and shivering--sometime during the night he’d stripped down to his pants, though he could not remember doing so. He pulled on a battered pair of trousers and a ragged t-shirt and performed his morning ablutions, then headed to the kitchen to make coffee.

He was sitting at the table, queasily taking alternating sips of water and coffee, reading over their notes from the night before. As their blood-alcohol level had increased, their handwriting became more and more of a scrawl, and now Julian squinted, trying to make sense of the words. What he could decipher had a certain manic energy that he recognized from many previous sessions.

The best bit had been one in which Bollo had accidentally served Howard and Vince a cocktail containing one of Naboo’s potions, a remedy for sexual dysfunction. The two men woke up the next morning in the same bed, missing both their clothing and their memories, desperately trying to piece together what had transpired between them the night before. The awkwardness intensified until the shaman council, who had had enough of their pining, organized the worst-ever intervention to set it right.

It was unfinished, rough, but it showed promise. Julian did not remember writing it--they had certainly been well on their way to a blinder by then--but there was something honest in it, more honest than anything they’d written before. Julian had been a comic writer for three decades. If he knew anything about writing, it was this: so many people assumed that you had to be serious in order to be meaningful. Yet just because a bit was funny, it didn’t mean that it couldn’t tell you something serious about what it meant to be human. In fact, all the best jokes had a little bit of truth in them--without that little kernel of honesty, they would not work nearly so well.

He was still staring at the page, trying to decipher what that could be, when Noel eventually sauntered out of the bedroom. His hair was sticking up at weird angles, and he kept rubbing his eyes. But when he saw Julian sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee in one hand and a glass of water in the other, he plonked down across from him and smiled his dazzling smile. “What are you making me for breakfast?”

“You’re a brat, you realize,” Julian groused. He surreptitiously stuffed the pages he’d been reading into his pocket, not yet sure he was ready for Noel to read them, at least not until he’d had a chance to make sense of them.

“Yeah, yeah,” Noel agreed good-naturedly. “Have you done omelettes yet? I feel like an omelette.” He stretched and winked at Julian saucily. Julian knew he should be miffed at Noel’s demands, but against his better judgement, he let himself be charmed by Noel’s casually-spoiled demeanor. He loved Noel like this, in the morning, before he’d had a chance to do his makeup or choose his outfit for the day. Very few people ever saw Noel without his carefully cultivated aesthetic armor, and Julian still felt a little special knowing that he was one of them.

Julian opened the fridge and took quick stock of its contents. “Yeah, I could do that.” He’d been practicing his omelettes, had gotten rather good at them, in fact. “Mushroom and cheese good?”

“Sounds delicious.” Noel helped himself to a sip of Julian’s coffee. Julian had to suppress a fond smile at this particular quirk of his.

“I can make you a cup of your own, you know,” he offered, knowing it was pointless, but he figured he should be polite and do so anyway.

Noel shrugged and took another swallow. “I like yours better.”

Julian knew he’d lost, and surrendered his mug to Noel as he poured himself a fresh one. He puttered around the kitchen, turning on the range and letting the pan heat up before he added the butter.

As he cooked, Noel prattled on about his plans for Julian’s birthday party. “It’ll be brilliant, Julian. We can reserve a private room at that weird jazz bar you like just for us, so you won’t have to mingle with the proletariat. Oh! We can get you a cake, one with a penis on it, from Vaudeville Bakery… you ever had black forest cake? I always thought you’d love it….”

Julian froze, spatula in hand. “You’re serious about this party thing.”

“Julian! You can’t go back on it now!” Noel puffed his chest out a bit indignantly. “It’s the perfect chance to get the Boosh back together and tell them the good news and you know it!”

“I was _drunk_ ,” Julian protested. Surely there was a rule against holding a man to promises he’d made when his blood alcohol was as high as it had been last night.

Of course, Noel wasn’t going to let him go back on his word. “You’ll call them,” Noel said, without a hint of a question.

Julian sighed, already knowing he would do exactly that.

 

Two weeks later, Julian sat on the couch and stared at his mobile. He’d been sitting here for an hour now, trying to come up with a reason to avoid making the call, but none of them were very convincing. With a sigh, he gave up. His hands were clammy with a nervous sweat and his fingers fumbled a bit as he dialed the familiar number.

He called Rich first. Rich was loud and strange. Somehow, out of all of the members of Boosh who weren’t Noel, Julian found him the easiest to talk to. Maybe because he never stopped talking.

Instead of greeting him with a _hello_ like a normal person, Rich asked, “What are you wearing?”

Julian looked down at his rumpled clothing. His pants, he realized with no small amount of dismay, were getting a bit tight. It was probably Noel’s fault, all the beer and the rich desserts that Julian had been making to sustain them as they wrote. “Ummm, khakis?”

Rich’s laugh was a booming thing, and Julian had to hold the phone a few inches from his ear until he’d burned himself out. “Still have a thing for sexual shades of beige, huh?”

“Well, it _does_ match my skintone.” He cracked a smile despite himself.

“I’ve seen your flabby Northern ass enough times to know that’s true. Why the hell are you calling me?” Typical Rich, always getting right to the point, but not before dropping a playful insult or two.

Julian knew an opening when he heard one. “Well, as you may have heard, I’m gay now. To commemorate my burgeoning middle-aged homosexuality I'll be having a coming out party in a couple of weeks.”

“Little Julian, all grown up! Bet your sweet pumpkin ass is even flabbier than I remember it.”

It hit a bit too close to home. Julian resolved to go on a diet _right now_ and sucked in his stomach, then felt a bit daft when he realized Rich couldn’t see him. “Oh, piss off. I’m trying to invite you to my coming out party, you demented slag!”

“You buyin’ me a ticket, or do I have to whore myself out to buy one?”

 _Typical Rich._ “Business must be booming these days,” Julian said, a little bit sarcastic.

“I’ll have you know I’m like a fine… cheese. I just get riper and more delicious with age.”

Julian could believe it, and said so. “Smellier too, I bet.”

“The stink is part of the appeal. My clientele is a very discerning bunch. Connoisseurs, the lot of them. They’re not after a young sweet mozzarella or a 3-month Gouda.”

Julian’s stomach rumbled. He groaned. All the cheese metaphors were making him hungry.

Rich ignored him. “You want me to give you some referrals?” he asked.

“Sure, but you should know, I only go for men now.” He paused a bit for dramatic effect. “Well-aged ones, preferably.”

“Oh, Julian, you’re finally out of the closet! I’m so proud of you!”

“Why did Noel say the exact same thing?” Julian grumbled good-naturedly. He missed Rich; the comment reminded him of how easily Rich had fit with he and Noel. They hadn’t had to explain the Boosh to him, he knew instinctively what they needed. Hell, they’d barely had to write his lines for him. Every time they tried, he’d come up with something even better, weirder, than they ever had.

Rich seized on the tidbit of information like a rabid dog. “You and Noely got back together?”

“Ugh, don’t say it like that.” Julian waited a beat. “But yeah, we’ve been hanging out again. Doing a little writing, too, here and there.”

“So you _are_ back together.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Oh, Julian, you always were a massive dumbass.” Rich sounded rather fond. “You’re writing together again, you said?” He was obviously fishing for more information.

“Yeah.” Julian hadn’t wanted to mention it until the party, but he was swept up in Rich’s enthusiasm. Besides, he knew it was a better method than any other to get Rich to commit to a transatlantic trip. “We’ve been playing around a bit with the idea of bringing back the Boosh.”

“You guys should skip all the writing and just get to the bumming. I don’t know if I want to be a part of your weird foreplay again.” Rich paused dramatically. “Actually, I take that back. I _do_ want to be a part of your weird foreplay again. Maybe we can even have a threesome afterwards. You know, since we're celebrating your burgeoning middle-aged homosexuality and all.”

Julian shook his head and cringed. “I love you, Rich, but I find you disgusting.”

Undaunted, Rich fired back. “Just some hand stuff, then?”

“Rich!” Julian shrieked, then collapsed laughing. He hadn’t had any idea how much he’d missed this until he called. He hoped it would not take another ten years for them to talk again.

“Look, I’ll come to the party. But you and Noel are buying me a hotel room. I don’t wanna hear what you get up to at night if you’re not sharing.” Just from the tone of his words, Jullian knew exactly which expression his face was making.

“Fair enough,” Julian agreed, then hung up the phone with a promise to email over the details about travel arrangements.

 

Next, he called Dave. Dave was a little more complicated. He’d been Noel’s friend first--they’d met in art school--and Julian had no illusions about where his loyalties lay these last years.

After some small talk about what they’d each been up to, Dave seemed to come around. He wasn’t surprised that Julian was divorced. He did not bother to ask about the sordid details, which suited Julian just fine. Perhaps he’d already heard them from Noel.

“I’m having a coming out party in a couple weeks.” Julian changed the subject, trying to sound casual, but he was rubbish at it.

“Me have a bad feeling about this,” Dave grunted in his Bollo voice. It was pitch-perfect, despite the years that had passed since the last time he’d worn the gorilla suit.

“Yeah, yeah. You always have a bad feeling about everything. Most people call that anxiety. I’ve heard Xanax helps,” Julian grumbled. “Are you coming or not?” He didn’t see the point in trying to avoid the obvious.

“And miss this trainwreck?” Dave chuckled. “No way. I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

 

He tried calling a half-dozen times, but Mike never picked up. He didn’t bother to return Julian’s calls, either. Julian wasn’t surprised. Mike had always idolized his older brother, but unlike Noel, he was capable of holding a grudge.

“He doesn’t think I should have forgiven you,” Noel admitted when Julian asked him about it.

“Hell, even I don’t think you should have done that.” Even now, as they lounged in Julian’s big bed, cluttered with art supplies and scraps of paper, Julian still wasn’t sure he deserved it.

Noel tried to raise a brow, but he’d never quite gotten the hang of doing one at a time. The expression on his face was more shocked than sarcastic. “Ju, you know how I feel about that. Stop trying to be a martyr. You’ve got the hair and the beard, but not the abs for it.” He poked Julian’s stomach, and the soft flesh yielded easily.

“Matyrdom isn’t about looks, you know. It’s metaphysical, more in the mind. And I’ll have you know, my brain get so much exercise that it has a six-pack.” Julian scoffed and tried to bat him away, but it was a lost cause. Noel took the opening and dug his fingers into Julian’s sides, seeking out his most ticklish spots with the accuracy of someone who had long ago committed them to memory.

Julian took his punishment like a man: squealing at slapping at Noel to get away from him.

Noel didn’t stop until he was satisfied that Julian had suffered enough. By then, they were both red-faced, panting, and disheveled. “I’ll talk to him,” Noel promised between breaths. “He’ll come around.”

“You do that,” Julian said as he got to his feet. The room was in disarray, and Aaron had said he would be coming by soon. He walked across the room and grabbed a new set of sheets from the closet. “Help me change the sheets,” Julian demanded, picking one of Noel’s hairs off the blanket. “You’re shedding like a molting Yeti.”

“Why? You got a big date or something?” Noel whined, but he got up to help anyway.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do.” Julian stole a look at the alarm clock on the nightstand. “In about twenty minutes, to be precise.”

“What’s the point? You’re only going to have to change them again tomorrow,” Noel grumbled.

“I don’t want to get your hair in my arse,” Julian grumbled, yanking the sheet off the bed and grabbing a new set from the closet.

“Julian! This is an outrage!” Noel exclaimed in his best Tony Harrison voice. Julian had the vague idea that they should write a new bit for the pink ballbag, who had yet to make an appearance in the scenes they’d already written. “Just for that, I’m going to rub my head all over the bed before I go.”

Julian tossed the fitted sheet at his face. “Stop being a tit and get to it.”

A knock sounded on the door. Aaron was habitually early in the way that serious businessmen often were. “Finish this,” Julian groaned as he walked down the hall to let Aaron in--he hated people who were always early. It was rude, ruder than being fashionably late, but he opened the door and greeted Aaron a kiss on the cheek like a proper boyfriend all the same.

Aaron slipped his arms around Julian’s waist and pulled him closer for a proper snog, which was interrupted by a maniacal-sounding cackle from the bedroom. He and Aaron walked down the hall to investigate, catching Noel furiously rubbing his shaggy head on the clean sheets.

“Julian, what is Noel doing to your bed?” Aaron asked, looking confused as Julian felt.

“It’s revenge,” Noel explained. His hair was sticking up from the static, making him look more unhinged than usual. “Julian called me a Yeti.”

“Don’t pay him any mind,” Julian said. “He’s just being weird.” 

“Oi!” Noel protested, but he did not stop.

Aaron’s glance flickered between Julian and Noel. “You guys have a very strange friendship.”

“Yeah,” Julian agreed. “Yeah, we do.”

Noel flipped him the bird, smoothed down his hair, and walked out of the apartment, cackling the whole way.

Julian puttered around the room, stuffing the dirty sheets into the hamper and trying to clean up some of the detritus from the earlier failed writing session. “Sorry you had to see that.”

“What’s there to see?” Aaron asked dryly. It sounded more rhetorical than anything. “It’s perfectly normal for your best mate to rub his head all over your sheets in some kind of primitive scent-marking ritual. Happens all the time.” He collapsed onto the mattress, toeing off his expensive loafers and lying back to gaze at Julian in obvious invitation.

“If you think that, you’ve got weirder friends than I do, and I didn’t know that was possible,” Julian said, lowering himself over his boyfriend.

“I was being sarcastic, you tit,” Aaron said, but he let Julian kiss him all the same.

Julian pulled back for a moment, just enough to look Aaron in the eye. His hand was still cupping Aaron's jaw, so he stroked it with his thumb. Aaron's skin was smooth and freshly shaved, except for a small patch of stubble near his ear, which Julian found endearing. As he stroked at the little rough patch, he thought he should mention the upcoming party. “Hey, I know it's still kind of… new between us, but I've been thinking of having a coming out party.”

Aaron raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

He felt suddenly self-conscious at what that implied. “I'm not even sure if I’m going to make a statement in the press, yet. Just a few old friends getting together to celebrate my late-in-life homosexual awakening.” He stroked over the spot Aaron had missed shaving a few more times. “It doesn't have to be a big thing, but I'd like it if you came. Considering we’re dating and all. But I understand if it's a bit… much.”

“Mmm, when?” Aaron’s eyes were closed, one of his hands stroking Julian’s lower back.

Not sure if he was listening, Julian continued, “Next month. You should come. I want you to,” he finished, a bit more confident now.

Aaron flashed him a flirtatious smile. “Oh, I’ll be coming all right.” He pulled Julian’s face to his own by the hair into a wet and sucking kiss. Soon enough, they were naked and writhing around together on the sheets.

Julian did end up with one of Noel’s hairs in his arse, but he couldn’t find it in him to complain about it much.

 

“So, this is your big coming out party,” Rich said, taking in the subdued beige tones of the jazz club Julian had chosen for his party. “I’m a little disappointed in you, Julian. I thought this would be gayer.”

“Yeah, this seems awful… straight.” Dave’s eyes twinkled, a bit amused. “We are at least getting a stripper, right?”

“Sorry,” Julian said. “I got gayer, but no more fabulous. Bit of a disappointment, really.” He smiled as if letting them in a private joke, though it was nothing they didn’t already know about him. He led them over to the table, where Noel and Mike and Aaron were gathered around the low-slung table, already nursing drinks.

He gestured over to his boyfriend, who was sat in an armchair and looking out of place in his chic suit jacket and tailored slacks. “Hey, guys, I’d like you to meet Aaron.” He kissed Aaron the cheek, and Aaron smiled, preening a bit as he leaned over and offered his hand. Dave and Rich were polite enough, but Mike eyed Aaron with blatant dislike as they shook hands, though not quite as much as he did Julian.

Noel scooted over on the couch, and Julian settled into the space he’d made against the armrest, while Aaron sat back in his overstuffed chair on the other side of the table. Rich insinuated himself onto the couch, pushing Noel over until his hip brushed Julian’s.

“Toast! Toast!” Noel shrieked, running his finger inside the rim of his glass to make it hum.

“Thank you for coming to my party,” Julian said, standing up. “But we haven’t invited you here to celebrate the improbable fact of my late-in-love conversion to gaydom.” He grinned down at Noel, who grasped his hand and let Julian pull him to his feet. “We’ve got an announcement to make…”

“You two’re in love again!” Rich hollered. Everyone laughed, except Aaron, who watched Julian and Noel with narrowed eyes. Julian was suddenly self-conscious of the fact that he and Noel were still holding hands, but when he tried to wriggle his hand free Noel’s fingers only tightened around his.

“No, even better,” Noel laughed, standing swaybacked so his belly stuck out. He cupped the resulting bulge with their intertwined hands like an expectant mother. “We’re pregnant!”

Julian felt a curious mixture of embarrassment and pride. “We’ve been doing a bit of writing for the Boosh, another stage show. And wanted to know if you’ll be coming back if we finish it.”

The boys looked at their clasped hands, and then at each other.

“We’re very happy for you,” Dave deadpanned. “But I didn’t get you a present for the shower.”

“You have to make me the godfather,” Rich said. “Otherwise I’m abandoning it to be raised by wolves.”

“Rich, if you wanted a production credit, you just had to ask,” Noel said. He stretched and straightened his back finally letting go of Julian’s hand.

“Well, that, and also raise money,” Julian added, shoving his hand into his trouser pocket. “We do have standards.”

“Money’s no problem. I do have a thriving escort business on the side,” Rich said without missing a beat.

“Why does this not surprise me?” Mike asked philosophically.

Dave squinted a bit , considering. “So what’s it like? Does it pick up from where it left off, like in the shop?”

“Well, you see,” Noel answered, “Julian’s been taking these cooking classes--”

“Julian? Cooking?” Mike looked skeptical about the concept.

“Oh, yeah,” Noel said. “He’s gotten rather good at it, actually. The other day he made a lamb stew--”

“Basically, the gang works in a restaurant and everyone keeps getting accidentally dosed with Naboo’s potions and psychedelics,” Julian cut him off, feeling awkward about the way Noel was bragging about his cooking skills. “He’s the head chef as well as a shaman and very careless with his ingredients.”

“That might actually be demented enough to work,” Rich mused.

“You’ll love it,” Noel assured him. “Bob Fossil owns the place, and he spends all his time sexually harassing his staff and his customers. Basically, you’re perfect for the part.”

Rich groped him, and everybody groaned. “Thanks, mate,” Dave muttered.

“Hey, you’re in a gorilla suit. You’re safe. Fossil’s a lot of terrible things, but he’s not a beastialist,” Rich protested. “Everyone else’s sweet ass is up for grabs.”

They laughed and talked a bit about some various bits they’d written, mentioning one where Vince and Howard go foraging for mushrooms and Naboo accidentally doses the entire restaurant with psychedelic mushroom risotto in a bit of detail when it was clear the boys’ interest was piqued.

Everyone riffed a bit on the premise, and after a bottle of wine or two, the guys seemed happy enough to have Julian back, all of them perhaps except Mike. It was to be expected, after all--though he was ten years younger and nearly a foot shorter than his older brother, Mike had always been fiercely protective of Noel.

Julian had been meaning to try and avoid him all night, but he’d stumbled upon him without trying when he’d ducked out on the patio for some air. He was starting to get used to life as a non-smoker. The cravings came and went, but what he really missed was the easy excuse to take some time to be quiet and away from a big group of people. As a compromise, he’d started taking short breaks to sit in a quiet place on nights when he went out, and it helped, a bit.

“I hope you know what you're doing,” Mike growled from the shadows, sounding--and looking--like nothing so much as one of those little dogs with short legs that had been bred to hunt badgers, small and cute but vicious too.

“I never do.” Julian said, making his way over to the patio table in the shadows where Mike was busy rolling a blunt.

“I’m talking about Noel, you daft fool,” Mike said, clearly expecting Julian to understand. He may have been right when he'd called him a bit daft; Julian still had no idea what the hell he was getting at.

“We’re best friends, Mike. You've heard of best friends? It's what happens when two men love each other very much in a completely platonic way.” Julian insisted, perhaps a little too vehemently. Always had been, but even though he knew there was more to it than that, he didn’t bother to explain. Like aliens and yetis and conspiracy theories, his friendship with Noel had always defied explanation.

Mike scoffed. “I was there when you weren’t.” His voice had a cryptic edge to it. “You don’t know what it was like for him.” He puffed on his blunt, not bothering to offer it to Julian. Julian did not mind so much--he’d lost his taste for it over the years. Unfortunately, he couldn’t say the same about cigarettes as the old craving starting nagging at him yet again. 

He settled for pulling at his lips instead. “You’re right--I don’t know what it was like for him.” He lifted his head up to stare at the fracture of sky that peeked out from over the top of the townhouses surrounding the courtyard  diffused in the foggy sky. Improbably, the moon was suspended there, a bit hazy through the fog and light pollution, but there all the same. It was almost full, and Julian stared at it, wondering it was waxing or waning. Mike stared with him, quiet, waiting, whatever question he had not satisfied. “But I know what it was like for me. And if it was one tenth as bad, I never want him to feel anything like it ever again.”

Mike pulled on the blunt again, but it had gone out. He relit it. The flame illuminated his high cheekbones and made the shadows collect in his eyes before it flared out, and not for the first time, Julian thought that the two brothers hardly looked related: Mike’s face was classically handsome and he was tiny, Noel was a bit taller than average with craggy, pointy features. “This isn't about you, Julian. This is about Noel, who always needed you more than you needed him.”

“I know. I always knew.” It didn’t seem like the right thing to say, and Julian wished he had something to add to it.

Mike shook his head. “I don’t think he’s ever learned how to need you less, only hide it better.” He released a stream of smoke out of his nose, then sucked it back in through his mouth. Before finally exhaling he said, “I think you should know that. Before you commit to doing…. Whatever it is you’re doing. Some big gay musical. It’s not going to fix you and Noel. He’s still going to need you maybe more than he should. _That’s_ not going to change,” he snorted. “The only thing that can change is whether or not you can deal with that this time around.”

“When you’re trying to live two lives at once, you can only live half in each,” Julian said philosophically. “I know he isn’t going to change, Mike. But I have more to give, now, and somehow not having him around is worse than having to deal with the worst of him.”

Mike tossed the blunt onto the deck and ground it out, then put the short in his pocket. “You know I will need a little time. Time to decide what I’m gonna do.” He turned to Julian, giving him another one of his enigmatic dark-eyed looks. “I’ll read the script, at least.”

It wasn’t _yes_ but it was something. “Yeah,” Julian said softly, “thanks for that.”

The moon was still there, so they looked at it some more. Eventually Mike broke the silence. “The moon talks to me, you know.” Mike said.

Julian couldn’t stifle an eye-roll.  “The moon talks to everyone. We did a bit on it.”

“The moon is not a blathering retard in the sky. That's Noel, pretending to be the moon,” Mike chided. “If you can understand it, it actually has some useful information to share.”

He traced the outline of the moon with his finger. “The moon is almost full. Will be in three days.” He held his thumb to his eye and squinted, assessing. “The old phase is ending, and many things are ending with it. They’re an odd thing, full moons. This one is in Scorpio, so it’s gonna be an intense one. Whatever is ending, you’ll think it will end _you_ along with it.” He stared at the sky, contemplating. “But after the old phase ends, a new one will take its place. You’ll think the new phase is worse, to start. But by the time the new moon arrives, you’ll be ready to start something new. Get rid of all the old baggage, you’ll be ready to start something new with a clean slate.”

Julian had forgotten that Mike was into all that astrology bullshit. They’d made Naboo a shaman for a reason, he remembered now. He’d always been skeptical about astrology, but he looked back up at the moon, trying to be quiet enough to hear what it had to say. No matter how closely he listened, the moon sat silent and blank above them.  

But even if Julian couldn’t hear it, it was clear Mike could. His eyes were half-closed, as though he were listening intently to someone, trying to concentrate harder by blocking out his other senses. “You could lose something you care for if you’re not careful. But there’s a chance it will come back, just in a different form. It won’t be easy--you’ll have to work at it. But it’ll be worth it. If you don’t, it will be gone for good.” Mike looked him in the eye. It didn’t last long enough for Julian to be sure, but he suspected that Mike would come through when it counted, though not before getting a substantial raise.

With that, Mike excused himself and headed back into the club.

Julian sat there for a while, worrying his lips between his fingertips and thinking about what Mike had just said and how much he wanted a cigarette. Eventually he tired of that and headed back inside, too.

The party was in full swing. They were four bottles in, and everyone was starting to slouch, languid and wine-drunk, wordy. Noel was engaged in some kind of slow-motion slapstick routine with Rich when he noticed Julian watching. His mock fight with Rich forgotten, his expression mellowed into one of pure affection as he made space for Julian on the couch. It made something in Julian ache, and he returned the expression before he realized he was doing it.

He regretted it immediately--it made him feel oddly exposed, like everyone was trying not to look at him as he settled back into his place on the couch next to Noel, crossing his left leg and resting his foot on the armrest.

Noel scooted closer to him, crossing his folded leg under Julian’s knee, while Julian pretended not to notice him doing it. Julian slouched a bit more, folding himself into the space between them until their hips were almost touching. Something electric and achingly familiar vibrated in that small space; the hair on his arms was standing up with it.

Mike and Dave and Rich knew well enough not to comment on it--this was normal. They’d long ago learned that Julian and Noel eventually ended up in each other’s space by some force unlike any other on earth, a weird gravity that existed between them and pulled them into each other’s orbit. If you got too close, it would shock you; over time, they’d learned to keep their distance.

But Aaron didn’t know, and he kept shooting Julian enigmatic looks from his oversized chair. Even if he’d met Noel a few times now, Aaron hadn’t really seen what it was like when Julian and Noel were working together: living and breathing each other until they resembled a single strange chimera or a pair of Siamese twins joined at the mind, so close in a metaphysical space that they inevitably ended up in each other’s physical space.

Julian felt a vague sort of regret that he’d invited Aaron to come tonight. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, to invite his boyfriend to a coming out party, but in practice, he realized this had never been about his late-in-life conversion to gaydom; it had always been about the Boosh, Julian realized now.

Aaron hadn’t been in the trenches. He hadn’t died onstage with them over and over again until being reborn into something as weird and mighty as the Boosh. Aaron couldn’t begin to understand the rapid-fire banter between them, didn’t get the jokes. He seemed equal parts appalled and annoyed at Rich, called the gallery where Dave’s latest photographs had been shown “derivative”, and got into an argument about how astrology wasn’t real with Mike, which resulted in Mike turning his back on him for the rest of the night. 

It was an old joke, but a good one, and Julian laughed along with them before realizing what a shitty thing it was to do to his boyfriend on the night of his coming out party.  Aaron glared at him, knuckles white where they tightened around his glass. Julian forced himself to stop laughing, but not before the damage was done--the way Aaron uncoiled each finger from the glass one-by-one and sat up in his chair said as much.

They left not much later, well before the bar closed at 2, each man making a joke about old age as he excused himself--except for Noel, who was hyped and wanted to hit a real club, at least until he realized no one was going to go with him. Julian apologized in the cab Aaron grudgingly decided to share with him; he’d accepted both his apology and his invitation to come by the flat, but remained quiet during the cab ride home. His face worse a subdued expression that suited his serious features well. Aaron really was an attractive man, Julian mused during the cab ride home, independently successful, effortlessly cool in a way Julian wasn’t… far enough out of his league he doubted he’d find better. He resolved to apologize once they’d made it to the flat.

When they arrived, Julian headed straight to the kitchen, pouring them each a glass of water before sitting down, going over his apology in his head. Aaron accepted the water and took a gracious sip, still standing next the counter. He looked down at Julian, then beat him to the punch. “You’re a nice guy, Julian. But I don’t know if that’s enough…”

“Course it’s enough. You’re a fit bloke, I’m a fit bloke, and we’re nice to each other.” Julian always froze in these situations; his first instinct was always to try and tease his way out of them.

“Do you really think that’s all there is to it?” Aaron, who was ignoring Julian’s attempt to lighten the mood with humor, didn’t look convinced.

“Course I do! You’re my boyfriend,” he insisted, perhaps a little too hard. He wrapped an arm around Aaron, attempting to pull him into an embrace against the kitchen table.

Aaron wriggled out of his grasp, turning to face Julian and look him in the eye. “Am I, Julian?”

“Sure you are. We’ve been seeing each other for a couple months now.” Julian said, voice full of an alcoholic confidence he didn’t really feel.

Aaron pressed his lips into a tight line. “Because I wonder,” Aaron said, resting his chin in his hand, “if that’s a good idea.”

“What’s there to wonder?” Julian asked. He was drunk and confused, yet altogether uncomfortably aware that they were on the precipice of an uncomfortable conversation. He pulled at his lips in the nervous habit he’d taken up since he’d quit smoking.

With a roll of his eyes, Aaron huffed out a response. “As far as I can tell, you already _have_ a committed relationship.” He didn’t bother to name names, but Julian knew instantly who he meant.

The words came out in a whisper so choked that Julian wasn’t sure he even believed himself. “We--we’re just friends.” He didn’t bother to say who. It felt like he’d been saying the same thing all night.

“You keep saying that.” Aaron was staring at him coldly. “But I have eyes, Julian. It’s not like you try to hide it. I can see the way you look at each other. The way you two orbit around each other like the sun and the moon. This is not a thing I ever thought I’d have to say to another person, but…. he puts his hair in your bed.” His nose crinkled with distaste at that.

Julian denied it, out of long-estalished habit. “There’s nothing to hide.”

Aaron laughed, a little bit cruel. “You really think that, don’t you?” He shook his head. It was clear that he thought Julian was an idiot. “I think I should go,” he said, reaching for his coat.

He had a feeling it was hopeless, but he had to ask. “I’ll call you, yeah?”

Aaron shook his head. “Probably better if you don’t.”

Julian sat on the couch, unsure how he’d managed to get himself dumped by his first-ever boyfriend on the eve of his coming out party. It seemed like an omen. Other terrible things, he mused, were sure to come.

 

He ended up at Noel’s apartment three nights later, sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. “And that’s how I got dumped on the eve of my coming out party,” he moaned into his palms.

“There, there, Julian,” Noel said, patting his back in an exaggerated gesture of comfort. “Drink. It will make you feel better.” He pushed a glass that was conveniently full of alcohol over to him, and Julian drank.

Julian grimaced and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Jesus Christ, that’s awful,” he griped, glaring at the offending liquid.

“Yeah, it’s the cheap stuff,” Noel agreed, altogether too cheerfully.

“Why would you do this to me? I’ve got a broken heart. I’m 50, I can’t take much more of this before it just gives up and stops working altogether. At least give me good alcohol if you’re going to get me pissed.”

“Drink enough and you’ll have a hangover so bad that your whole body will hurt so much that you’ll forget all about your broken heart,” Noel said wisely.

Julian took another swig, because he couldn’t argue with that logic. He did not fail to notice, however, that Noel was mixing himself a martini with top-shelf vodka.

“It was stupid to think I could, I don’t know, actually _date_ a bloke. I’m rubbish at dating,” he explained, taking another sip of his whiskey, which still tasted like shite. Maybe it had been; at least, he’d never before experienced the kind of sex he liked best without feeling a crippling wave of guilt craving after every fuck--but _Julian_ was still Julian, and maybe that was the problem. “I don’t know why I thought it would be different if I was out. But I still make people feel like they need to get away from me.”

“I’m still here,” Noel said. Julian could tell he’d meant it to be comforting, but it sounded like a non-sequitur, and did nothing to staunch the wave of self-loathing that threatened to break.

“You left too.” It sounded like an accusation. As soon as he said it, Julian wished he could take it back.

Noel looked at him, his big blue eyes shining with something like pity. “Do you really think that, Julian?”

Julian stubbornly refused to answer, so he swallowed another mouthful of whiskey.

“Because that’s not how I remember things. _You_ were the one who left.” Noel slammed his cocktail down onto the table, none too gently. “You were always leaving.” He didn’t bother to mention the fact that he’d been right where Julian could find him when he’d finally been ready to come back.

The truth of it made Julian’s stomach sour. He _had_ been the one to walk away from the Boosh when they were at the height of their success, from Rich and Mike and Dave, but most of all, from Noel and all the confusing things he’d made Julian feel. “I--” he began, but stopped himself before he could try to make up another excuse for having been such an arse. “You’re right.”

Noel looked surprised, as though he could not believe that Julian had admitted to such a thing. “Yeah. ‘Course I’m right. I always am.”

“It’s the best and the worst thing I love about you,” Julian said before he could stop himself and think about what he was saying.

The moment lasted a bit longer than it should have, until Noel awkwardly batted his eyes and said in his best Old Gregg voice, “Do you love me?” a little bit too late.

It wasn’t funny--the joke landed too late--but Julian was ready to answer the usual way--in falsetto, singing _Take a step back, you’re moving too fast._ But that had never been the problem between them--they’d never moved from the place they began, not even over the course of two-and-a-half decades--and for once, he decided to be honest. “You must know I do.” His voice was pitched too high and cracked a bit.

“Oh.” Noel flushed, looking a bit bashful.

Julian didn’t know that he’d expected Noel to say it back until he didn’t, and felt immediately stupid. The mouthful of whiskey he’d poured into his gob suddenly felt as thick as wet cement, and he fought to swallow it. The alcohol burned his throat, giving him the kind of reckless courage that made him feel like doing something irresponsible. “I had a bit of a crush on you back then.” It was only half of the truth--he’d been massively in love with Noel, so much that he thought he might die of it. “Surprised you never noticed.”

When Noel didn’t respond, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a crushed packet of cigarettes. He lit one without bothering to ask Noel if he minded.

“I thought you quit.”

 _Typical Noel,_ Julian thought, ignoring the important stuff only to comment on something meaningless. “I keep trying to,” Julian said, letting the smoke out in a steady stream. “Can't quite seem to make it stick.” He stared at the burning cherry at the tip, wondering if he was still talking about the fags, and knocked the ash into one of the half-empty teacups that littered the table. Noel was always doing that, abandoning his tea when it got cold, brewing a fresh one instead of bothering to heat it up.

Noel stole the cigarette from between Julian’s fingers, placing it between his own lips. He took a few drags, a contemplative expression on his face. He tapped the fag so anxiously against the makeshift ashtray that the ash did not have a chance to accumulate.

His silence did nothing to assuage Julian’s reckless mood. A jolt of anger surged impatiently inside him at the way Noel’s obvious determination to ignore his confession. He poured himself another slug of the awful whiskey, taking a greedy sip that mixed with the roiling fury in his stomach. “This is exactly why I never told you, you know. You would’ve just pretended you never heard me. Or worse, made it into a joke again.”

Noel dropped the cigarette into the teacup and let it extinguish itself with a passive-aggressive hiss. “I knew, OK?”

Julian’s eyes narrowed. “You never mentioned it.” He knew he wasn’t being fair, but couldn’t make himself care.

“What could I have said? ‘Look, Julian, I know you’re trying desperately to be straight, but c’mon, be a dear and give me a good bumming?’” He let out a sarcastic little laugh. “Yeah, that would have went over well.” He reached across the table to steal another cigarette. He looked around absently for a light, and when Julian flicked his lighter on, leaned close enough that his hair brushed against Julian’s neck. It gave him goosebumps.

“You don’t smoke,” Julian commented with forced casualness, but let him take one anyway.

“I’m thinking of starting.” Noel laughed nervously. He kept tapping the fag against the ashtray in nervous little flicks as the words spilled out of him.

“Don’t,” Julian warned. The word came out harsher than he thought it would, but he didn’t care. “It’s a filthy habit.”

“What? You’re the only one of us allowed to have filthy habits? Like fucking around on your wife with all kinds of blokes? That’s _well_ filthy.” Noel’s eyes burned. He inhaled defiantly, managing to make the act of smoking into a taunt.

“Don’t know why I bothered. I wasn’t fooling anyone,” Julian admitted, lighting a cigarette of his own. The bitterness in his words was so strong he could taste it. “For what it’s worth, I always wished you would’ve. You were supposed to be the brave one.” He did not bother to mention that he was not.

“Typical Julian,” Noel shook his head. “You’re a coward, and somehow that’s _my_ problem?” He spat the words out, eyes gone sharp and blue as well-honed steel. “Back then, you were so deep in the closet… what if we fucked and you wanted to keep it a secret? What if we fucked and then we weren’t funny anymore? Or we fucked and you had a gay crisis or something? Would you have kept coming around? You would have just used it an excuse to blame me for ruining everything.”

Julian wanted to reach for him, tell him it wasn’t true, it wouldn’t have been like that, but he knew that Noel was right; he would not have kept coming around if the Boosh had failed. He would have been too afraid of what people would have said. Hell, he’d already freaked out during every interview, when the inevitable questions about their chemistry were asked. The sexual tension that crackled between them had been obvious to everyone, too strong for Julian to deny the way he denied the rest of his feelings. So he sat silently and let Noel keep talking until he burned himself out.

“That would have been worse, I think, than not being funny anymore. I could have lived with that. Living without you, well. It almost killed me.” The fag burned down as he spoke, and Noel tossed it into the teacup they’d been using as an ashtray, every bit of him vibrating with emotion. “You weren’t the only one, you know. Sometimes I wanted you so bad I could have choked on it.” He didn’t say _Sometimes I still do._ But Julian heard the words echo in the space between them all the same.

Julian felt he should try to say something, try to calm him down. He reached across the table, letting a cautious hand hover over Noel’s shaking one. “Noel--”

“Don’t touch me!” Noel spat. Julian snatched his hand back as abruptly as if he’d been shocked. That had been his line, and suddenly he knew how Noel must have felt, every time Julian dodged another one of his affectionate touches. “You should go. I can’t even look at you right now.”

Julian knew better than to push. He left so quickly he didn’t even think to grab his fags. He walked home in the drizzling London rain, his hands curled into fists in the pockets of his coat and wondering how he’d managed to keep fucking it all up so spectacularly, even after all this time. He had expected to feel a sense of catharsis when he finally confessed, but he felt only a creeping sense of despair.

It had hurt to lose Julia, and the boys, but somehow it didn’t even begin to compare. At least when his separation had been finalized, he’d known that there was something tying them together that could not be forgotten so easily--they were a family, and despite everything, he had a responsibility to continue to be in their life, no matter how tenuous or insignificant it seemed at times.

But what did he and Noel have between them? Just a handful of scraps, a half-written script, and more than two decades of sexual repression. It didn’t even begin to compare. Wasn’t even close to _enough._

Julian lifted his head to the sky. It did not escape his notice that the moon was full, hanging low and bright in a space between the clouds, and Julian let the rain spill down his face in streaks. The cold droplets pricked at his eyes. They felt like tears.

The rain, oblivious to his misery, kept falling.

 

He woke up the next morning aching and hungover. Though he’d only managed one drink, he could still taste the awful whiskey on his tongue. Just like Noel promised, his whole body hurt. But Noel had been wrong about one thing--he could still feel his broken heart stuttering in his chest, and it hurt worse than his head or his back or anything else.

Julian pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to squint his eyes closed enough to block out the sun. He dragged himself off the couch and over to the sink, where he drank two glasses of water in quick succession. By then, he was conscious enough that he felt his bladder about to burst, so he pissed, brushed his teeth, and stared at himself in the mirror for a long, long time.

He barely recognized the face that looked back at him. He’d known he was starting to look his age, but he was surprised all the same at the amount of grey in his beard, the darkness of the bags under his eyes. He’d wasted so much time, and for what? The answer on the tip of his tongue did not surprise him: _To die old and alone,_ and he felt ashamed as soon as he thought it, realizing he was too young to be _this_ cynical. _Alas. Here we are._

He turned on the taps and drank a few handfuls of water before washing his face and heading back to the couch. His mobile was in his hand and he was dialing Rich before he even knew what he was doing.

Before he could say anything, Julian let out a sob. “I fucked it up.”

Rich was uncharacteristically quiet. Julian heard him let out several long slow breaths. “Julian. What did you do?” he asked, when it was obvious that Julian wasn’t going to elaborate without prodding. His voice was softer than Julian had ever heard it.

Julian gripped the phone so tightly he thought it might crack in his hand. “I--I told Noel…” he stuttered. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make himself say it. Saying it would make it true, and he wasn’t ready to admit it, not yet.

“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying….” Rich paused. “I don’t think Noel would be upset,” he finished, gently.

“It’s not--it wasn’t like _that_ .” Julian’s throat and chest tightened. He felt light-headed as though from lack of air. “I mean, it _was_ , but it went all _wrong_ …”

“Shh, shh,” Rich soothed. “You don’t have to rush it. I’m right here.”

Julian squeezed his eyes shut. It was easier to speak like this, blindly. “I blamed him. For not… not doing anything about it. It wasn’t--not his problem. It was _mine_.” He breathed in and out, slow and shuddering. “How do I fix this?”

“Julian.” Rich spoke slowly, deliberately. “You have to give him some time.”

“But I don’t _want_ to.” It sounded childish even to his own years. “I’ve wasted so much time already.”

“You’ve waited twenty-five years,” Rich said, patience oozing from his words. “As long as it takes, it won’t be so long as that.”

Julian, who was already so sick of trying to hold it together, fell apart. He was crying, the kind of ugly tears that made snot drip down his face. Rich made indistinct soothing noises on the other side of the phone, but he could not stop. Even if he could have, he did not want to. He’d already done that, done it for so long, long enough that it had begun to rot from the inside out. He was afraid that if he did not let it out, his heart would turn gangrenous, poisoning his blood a little more with every beat.

 

Julian tried to take Rich’s advice and give Noel some space. He did not text, did not call, did not show up at his flat and throw rocks at the window until Noel had to let him in to keep him making a scene, no matter how badly he may have wanted to. He drank on his couch instead of going out to the local pub and risk encountering Noel, but the alcohol didn’t seem to have much of an effect anymore so Julian gave it up after a couple of tries, though he did go back to the fags something fierce.

His attempt to avoid all contact lasted all of a week. Noel, who always answered his calls before, let him go to voicemail four times in a row before Julian finally gave up. He skipped his cooking class graduation. The only meals he ate were cobbled together out of scraps, things like rice and peanut butter and peas from a can. It didn’t matter--he was smoking so much he couldn’t taste a thing.

Another week passed. Before he knew it, it was time for the boys’ monthly visit. He tried his best to make himself, and the flat, presentable, but judging by the pitying way Julia looked at him, he knew he had failed.

Perhaps he should have asked her to keep the boys another week. But he knew it would have been pointless--he would just have sat on the couch, listening to Nina Simone ballads and Charlie Parker outtakes, the ones where he was too fucked up to play properly, until the next weekend came, and the next, unless Noel stopped ignoring him first.

Walter and Arthur took one look at him and asked him if was going to die. “Not today,” he promised them, not entirely sure if it was a promise he could keep.

Julia lingered longer than usual. “You sure you can handle the boys this weekend?” Her voice was unusually gentle, kind in a way that Julian had not heard for a long time.

Julian nodded.

“You’ll call me if you need me, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he whispered. He let her hug him goodbye. It lasted only a moment, but it helped.

He and the twins went to Tesco’s that evening, out of necessity. Julian had eaten his way through the kitchen, and now all he had left was a bottle of Worcheshire sauce and some wilted lettuce.

Noel was standing there, in the aisle with all the baking supplies. He was wearing a subdued outfit of leggings and an oversize poncho in clashing shades of black, his basket full of sweet things: sugar and chocolate chips, rainbow jimmies and maraschino cherries. The sight of him made Julian’s heart throw itself against his ribs so hard he was sure it would break either his bones or itself.

He tried to skip the aisle and come back to it later, but the boys had already spotted him.

“Uncle Noel!” Arthur shouted as he and his brother raced over for a hug.

Noel indulged them, looking at Julian the whole time. He had bags under his eyes, and even from the other side of the aisle, Julian could see he wore no makeup. His skin was blotchy, and he had a couple of blemishes on his chin, visible under the two days’ stubble on his face. It made Julian’s heart beat even harder, and he was mildly surprised the thing didn’t explode.

“Julian,” he murmured, “What are you doing here?”

“Just some shopping,” Julian shrugged, reaching for a carton of chocolate baking powder. He’d promised the boys a chocolate cake, and he was going to keep that promise if it killed him. It seemed altogether possible.

“We’re going to make a cake!” Walter squealed.

“A chocolate one!” Arthur added.

“You’re good at cakes,” Walter said, still hanging on to Noel. “You could come over and help us!”

“Please?” Arthur begged.

Noel shook his head. Somehow, even that gesture looked sad. “Sorry, boys. Not today. I… I can’t.”

“Tomorrow?” Walter wheedled.

“Sorry.” Noel picked up his shopping, which had fallen to the floor when the boys had thrown themselves at him. He’d been gentle about it, but it was obvious the twins were still disappointed.

“Next time?” Arthur asked, whinging a bit.

“Maybe,” Noel said, perfectly noncommittal. He excused himself, and Julian pretended to compare the various brands of caster sugar, just so he didn’t have to watch him leave.

The touch to his elbow made him startle. He looked over his shoulder, expecting one of the twins, but Noel was standing there, a carton of chocolate powder in hand.

“Try this one,” he said, dropping it into Julian’s cart. “It’s better than the other stuff.”

“Thanks,” Julian said. He was surprised at how much he meant it.

The rest of the shopping trip went off without another hitch. Though Julian and the boys managed to make a passable chocolate cake, he couldn’t help but think that if Noel had been there, he would have made it better, sweeter, somehow.

 

Noel waited three days to call him.

Julian was sitting on the couch, guitar in his lap, not really playing, just plucking at the same melody in a minor key, over and over. He’d been doing it for hours, so out of it that he almost didn’t feel his mobile vibrate in his pocket.

In his haste to answer it, he accidentally sent Noel to voicemail. He called him back immediately.

Noel picked up on the first ring, just like he used to do. “Hello?”

Julian, struck by a sudden shyness, could only say _hi_. It came out in a creak, his voice rusty from equal parts disuse and chain-smoking. He sat up and cleared his throat, repeating himself, this time louder.

“Hi, yourself.” Noel’s voice sounded small and a little bit sad.

“I’m happy…” No, that wasn’t right. “It’s good to hear from you.” It wasn’t perfect but it was better. “I missed you.” Closer.

“Yeah,” Noel agreed, then went quiet again.

Julian pushed himself off the couch to pace across the floor of his tiny living room. “How are you?” he asked, then grimaced. They were the kind of words strangers spoke to one another. Even at their worst, when they hadn’t talked in months or years, he had never quite been able to consider Noel a stranger.

Noel let out a brittle little laugh. “Terrible.” He inhaled; over the tinny speaker his breath crackled with static. It might have been a sigh.

“Yeah. Me too,” Julian admitted.

“Ju--” Noel said, and the sound of the familiar nickname spilling from his mouth made Julian’s heart flutter as if waking from a long sleep. “Please let’s never fight again.” Noel’s words came out in a desperate rush. “It might kill me.”

The truth in it made Julian’s mouth go dry. “It would kill me first.”

“You can’t die,” Noel murmured. “You still have so much to give.”

Not too long ago that would still have made Julian laugh. Today, though, it had been so long since he had last laughed that he wondered at how easily he had done it, how often. He sighed instead. “I used to. Then realized I gave it all to you.” Julian should have been embarrassed--it was too sappy--but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Noel let out another one of those long, shuddering sounds. “Can I come over?” Before Julian could say _yes_ he rambled on. “I tried to stay away, I really did. But I can’t now. I--I need you too much, I’m--”

Julian interrupted him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hear what Noel had to say, but it seemed more important that Noel come over as soon as possible. “Yes, you silly man. Come over. Right now. I’ve been waiting.”

“OK,” Noel said, already hanging up.

He knocked on Julian’s door less than twenty minutes later. When Julian opened it to let him in, an awkward moment passed before Noel launched himself into his arms. Julian wrapped them around his shoulders and let Noel press his nose into his chest. “You came,” he murmured, feeling more than seeing Noel’s answering nod. “

Julian pressed a kiss to the top of his head. It made Noel grab onto him tighter. “You’ve lost weight,” he observed.

“I’ve been smoking again. Can’t taste anything.” He rubbed his hands up and down Noel’s back. “You feel a little--fluffier.”

“I’ve been baking,” Noel admitted. He always had tended to remedy the more bitter moments in life with sugary sweets. “‘S why I’m wearing leggings. Outgrew all my drainpipes.”

“I like them on you,” Julian said, and meant it. He couldn’t help but notice that Noel’s thighs looked well thick. Other men might notice a nice arse or well-built arms, but Julian had always had a thing for thickly-muscled thighs. It was probably Noel’s fault: even when he’d been skinny, he’d had a former athlete’s well-built thighs.

They’d been standing in the middle of the living room for an awkwardly long time, Julian realized. “Come, let’s sit.”

Noel shook his head. “Don’t wanna let go.” He buried his face even further into Julian’s chest.

“You don’t have to,” Julian said, reaching behind himself to intertwine his fingers with Noel’s. “See?”

“Brilliant.”

Noel let himself be led to the couch by their clasped hands. No sooner had they sat down than he’d crawled up against Julian’s side, almost in his lap, and Julian cupped his hand under Noel’s chin, tilting it up so they were looking each other in the eye. It was prickly with five o’clock shadow against his palm. “Noel. We should talk.”

“Do we have to?” Noel’s voice had a hint of a whine.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so,” Julian said, stroking the stubble on his jaw with his thumb. “We--we’ve spent enough time not talking about it. It almost broke us. Twice. I don’t want to do that again.”

“Me neither.” Noel closed his eyes, slowly, like a cat, stretching lazily against him.

As often as he’d imagined this moment over the last several weeks, now that it was finally happening, Julian was at a loss for words. He ran through a few options in his head before deciding to be brutally honest. “I’m in love with you. I used to think maybe I’d grow out of it, that if I had every other part of you, we would always be best mates, and it wouldn’t matter if we were never lovers.”  His gaze flickered from Noel’s wide blue eyes to his wide pink mouth before catching himself, feeling the flush burning up from his chest and neck onto his cheeks. “It didn’t work that way. And maybe you don’t want what, what I want, but I can’t love you in secret like this. Not anymore.” Noel was still looking at him, eyes wide and wet. Julian wondered if he had blinked even once.

“I been waiting to hear you say it,” Noel confessed. He tickled the palm of Julian’s hand with his fingers. “We shared everything else. I wanted to. I remember what it was like… knowing what you wanted and hating you for not being brave enough to ask. Trying to keep everything else of you all to myself.” He yanked their intertwined hands to his mouth to drop a kiss onto the ridge of Julian’s knuckles. “I have never learned not to be greedy with you. But I am--trying.” His mouth moved with the words, and the shape of them on his skin was electric, just like the first time Noel had touched him. It had been nothing so clandestine as a handshake, no way--Noel’s fingers had wrapped around his wrist and squeezed, instantly shocking him. At first, Julian’d mistaken it for carpet shock, the kind of static charge you might get on a cold, dry night, even though it had happened on a rainy spring night and the bar floor was bare linoleum. And then Noel’d kept touching him, and it hadn’t taken Julian long to figure out that touching Noel could be literally electric.

And as Noel dragged another wet kiss over his knuckles, Julian was hit by another realization: “Noel. I’m going to kiss you now.” He wasn’t asking permission; it was more a warning than a question. But Noel didn’t hesitate--he tilted his chin up and parted his lips just enough for Julian to see the ridge of his teeth glinting in the pink darkness of his mouth. So Julian covered it with his own.

If touching Noel for the first time felt like being hit by lightning, kissing him felt the same, only a thousand times _more_. It wasn’t perfect--Noel’s big nose got in the way, and it took a bit of awkward angling before they figured out one that worked--but the twenty years of foreplay still made it the most electric kiss Julian had ever had.

Their stubble rasped together and Noel moaned. “Fuck, you feel so good.” It went straight to Julian’s dick, which was hard and aching in an instant. Julian couldn’t resist--he dragged a slow, sucking kiss from one corner of Noel’s mouth to the other.

This time, he paid enough attention to notice that Noel’s lips were slightly chapped, that his tongue was pointy and agile, constantly teasing at his own where their mouths mingled. It felt good and then it was too much--Julian thought he might lose control and devour him, swallow his tongue from the root, and he pulled away, trembling with the effort it took to stop.

Noel let out a little whimper when the kiss broke, and Julian swallowed. “We’re supposed to be talking,” Julian admonished, not sure if the reminder was for Noel or himself.

“Oh fuck, please,” Noel whimpered. “Please, we can talk later. I need you now--don’t make me wait anymore, oh, I couldn’t stand it…” He whined and squirmed in Julian’s arms, and Julian’s resolve broke--he yanked Noel off the couch and led him down the hall to the bedroom.

Julian pushed open the door, then paused at the threshold, unsure what would happen next. Though they’d been in Julian’s room together countless times, hell, had shared the same bed on more occasions than Julian could count, it had never been like this. They’d always been at the cusp of it, stuck in a strange liminal space between friends and lovers: even now he felt a vague sort of deja-vu as the hands on his side drifted down his front, skirting below his bellybutton, then back up, in small circles that made the hair on his belly stand up, ambiguous enough in intention that Julian was hesitant to do anything that would push it one way or another. Instead, he concentrated on convincing himself that if he did not move, if he did not so much as moan, the moment would last forever.

He was so intent on not doing anything to break the moment that Noel backed him into the mattress before he realized what was happening. The corner of the mattress caught him just above the knee, and he teetered a moment, off-balance, until Noel pushed him backward with a gentle tap. He caught himself at the edge of the bed with feet on the floor and legs spread wide. His thighs were bracketing Noel’s, and he gazed up at him for a moment before locking his hands around Noel’s wrists and lying back. Noel let himself fall forward, and ended up standing on tiptoe between Julian’s thighs, the heel of his joined hands pressing the valley between Julian’s tits, wrinkling his shirt horribly.

The heat of his body was concentrated all in that one spot, where the heels of Noel’s hands rested between his tits. Slowly, it began to radiate outward, and even though he’d slept only a few fitful hours on the couch, Julian’s joints and muscles hummed, relaxing pleasantly.

It had always been like this, Julian realized; Noel would finish each gig charged up, whereas Julian felt used up. That was why they’d always had their hands on one another, so Noel could discharge and Julian could soak up what he was giving off. It was just another way they fit. Back then, he’d been able to sublimate his feelings into their shared creative projects; now that he was allowed, it felt strange to pour out all his want over Noel’s skin with neither paper nor pen between them.

Now Noel was undressing him, undoing the buttons of Julian’s shirt one by one, his hands dragging warmth over every exposed plane of Julian’s skin. The strange electricity he’d only felt like this, with Noel’s hands on him, arced lightning-hot everywhere Noel touched.

Once he’d managed to undo the last of Julian’s buttons, Noel pushed his shirt off his shoulders and down his arms, but it got stuck on his wrists, where they had both forgotten to undo the cuffs. Julian popped the buttons open and shrugged the garment on to the floor, pleased to note that Noel, who normally so fastidious about clothing, was distracted enough by getting Julian naked that he didn’t seem to notice.

His hands moved down to Julian’s belt, fumbling with the buckle, and Julian reached down help him, mumbling an excuse for the ways his body had changed. “I’m not--”

“You don’t feel the way I thought you would,” Noel admitted, ducking to peer at Julian from the corner of his eye. His hand was resting over Julian’s erection, which was sticking out from under his undone belt. “But this is better. It’s _real._ ” He squeezed as if assessing the size and shape of the prick in his hand, smirking a bit when Julian’s cock jumped from the touch.

Noel turned his attention back to getting Julian undressed, his caresses teasingly ignoring Julian’s erection in a way that made him keen as Noel pushed his trousers and pants off his legs. He’d expected it to be intense, the tender way that Noel undressed him made his belly quiver and his prick leak. It didn’t stop when he was finally naked: Noel stepped back to examine him, still fully dressed, but Julian, who always hated being seen, squirmed, a bit embarrassed but aroused, let him look.

Noel noticed his discomfort, and also his desire, but he did not seem to be in much of a hurry to get on with it. “You never let me _see_ ,” Noel explained, and Julian, guiltily, let him look a moment more before he got to the business of getting Noel naked.

He was hairier, now, under his clothes, and it surprised Julian how much he liked it, the black hair curling with sweat over the pale skin of his pectorals and flanks, the little patch of wiry black hairs between the dimples on his back, thick and smooth as a pelt. He’d seen Noel nude before--the man was an inveterate exhibitionist, after all--but never before had he allowed himself to really look, memorizing the planes and valleys of Noel’s body until he was sure he would never be able to forget.

The longer he looked, the more that electric feeling built up inside him. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling too much and not enough, then flipped onto his belly and groped in the top drawer of his nightstand. He groped around for the lube blind with need, knowing only that he needed Noel closer.

The bottle clicked open. “You want me to…?”

“Too much prep. I can’t wait,” Julian gasped, tossing the bottle somewhere in Noel’s general direction. “Just between my legs, fuck, now!”

Noel didn’t wait to drizzle the lube into the tight crevice between his thighs. Julian flinched, but Noel didn’t bother to apologize before something hot and hard nudged between his legs, a heat that Julian recognized--the heat of a cock. Just as the realization hit, Noel prised his legs apart to push his prick into the wet space between them. Julian moaned, and the rawness of it, howling, animal, _hungry_ , echoing between them.

A kiss brushed against the knob at the base of his neck. “Shhh,” Noel soothed, rocking his prick side to side as if he was trying to get Julian to open up for him. Julian let him in. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I won’t let go.”

Julian’d never felt so full of the electricity Noel gave off before--he was throwing off sparks. He reached for Noel’s hand, putting it over his heart, hoping he would feel all the things Julian was yet unable to say beating against his ribs, trying to find a way out.

Noel was still murmuring the same string of nonsense as his thrusts built in speed and intensity..   “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I won’t let go.” He kept saying it until the charge between them built to a critical point, then it discharged--Julian’s vision whited out and he went stiff, coming all over the duvet. Noel kept whispering, pressing Julian, who was shaking from the aftershocks, down into the wet spot to fuck against his thighs until he came, too.

Afterwards, when it was over, everything went still.

 

Julian wasn’t sure how long they laid against each other, slipping in and out of post-coital sleep, but when he woke up for the last time, he noticed that the grey afternoon sky was getting darker, the wind stronger. The green curtains on the bedroom windows billowed in the breeze, casting long shadows that danced on the walls and over the two men breathing each other in on the bed in the dusky half-light.

“I feel stupid, wasting all these years,” Julian confessed, resting his head against Noel’s throat, eyes still half-closed and sticky with sleep.

“You shouldn’t. We were always going to break.” Noel’s voice was matter-of-fact, as if he’d been commenting on the weather. The succinct reply was at odds with his rumpled appearance: smudged eyeliner and wearing Julian’s shirt, which he’d rescued from the floor sometime after their tryst. It draped over his torso, unbuttoned and oversized, still, it suited him, Julian thought. He pushed Noel’s fringe back to uncover his forehead; surprised, as always, at how different his face looked this way, more open.

Noel’s mouth split into a nostalgic smile, equal parts happy and sad, that Julian recognized from the time before. “We were two black holes back then, each trying to swallow the other. It was only a matter of time until it exploded.” Julian nodded. Everything about Noel had felt like an act of fate--unquestionable, inevitable, irrevocable. “At least,” Noel continued, “as long as there was something unfinished between us, we had a reason to come back to each other.”

“We can’t go back to the way it was. This can’t be like before,” Julian murmured, his words pressed to the skin behind Noel’s ear. “It was too much. It burned everything up.”

“It’s not the same. We’re not the same,” Noel repeated. He reached back to cup Julian’s jaw in his palm, the gentle pressure pushing Julian’s face into his skin. “Back then I could have drawn you from memory, without a picture, without even a pencil. The voice inside my head sounded just like you. I didn't know which parts of me belonged to you and which were mine to keep.” His forehead went ridgy against Julian’s cheek as it scrunched in concentration. “No, that wasn’t it. More like there was so much of you in me that there was no room for anything else. Not even me.”

“I know,” Julian said, because he did know. He’d felt the same way. “Sometimes I loved you so much, it felt like drowning. I couldn’t breathe--you took up all the air. It scared me. It still does.” Admitting it felt like drowning all over again. He pushed his stubbled jaw into the palm of Noel’s hand, feeling like an animal asking to be soothed. Noel obliged and scratched his scruff with gentle fingers until Julian caught enough breath to speak. “I don’t know if I know how to love you without losing myself along the way. But I know I have to try. Nothing else works, no one works, the way you do.” Noel’s pulse fluttered in his neck; Julian felt it beat against his cheek. He shifted to scrape his teeth on the thin skin, the blood so close to the surface he felt the moment Noel’s pulse quickened on his lips.

But he pulled himself away before the kiss could lead them back to bed, remembering something he’d meant to tell Noel. “Wait here,” he murmured, rummaging through his top dresser drawer fully naked. He felt Noel watching him, sitting artificially still. Julian could tell he was biting back a thousand questions as he watched him pick through the junk that had accumulated during their recent writing sessions.

Finally, he found what he was looking for at the back of the drawer: a ball of crumpled paper and a biro. He unfurled the sheets of paper, smoothing them as best as he could before making sure they were in order, then dumped the haphazard stack of papers in Noel’s lap. “I want you to take a look at something. It’s not much, just… scraps.”

Noel looked up at him, then down at the paper. Soon his eyes began flickering across the page--Julian knew what he was reading. He’d read it so many times he was sure he knew it by heart:

 

 

 

> _Vince and Howard wake up together on the floor of Howard's room in a pile of his old camping equipment. Someone is sleeping his bed, snoring comically, but they’re not sure who. All they know is that they’ve woken up in a single sleeping bag, wearing nothing but pants--and not even the right pants either._
> 
> _“Don’t touch me,” Howard warns, and immediately gets out of their pile of blankets and a collapsed tent, only to discover that his clothes are buried underneath. Vince grumbles but gets up and starts looking for his clothes. Howard’s wearing something tight and neon, whereas Vince is clad in a pair of comically old-fashioned boxers that resemble bloomers._
> 
> _The unknown person in the bed turns and mumbles something in their sleep. There is a slapstick moment where Howard and Vince try to recover their clothing before they wake up. They do not mention the fact that they are wearing each other’s underwear, and it becomes gag in the episode: Noel’s unfortunate underwear bunching obscenely in his tight trousers, complaining about how uncomfortable the other’s pants are, etc._
> 
>  
> 
> _“I’m a shaman. I deal in the future, not the past. You’re thinking of a psychiatrist. I’m not qualified to deal with your problems, Howard,” Naboo explains, exasperated. It’s clear this is not the first time they have had this conversation._
> 
> _“But you can use your mind powers to hypnotize us and see if we remember anything from last night,” Howard insists._
> 
> _“No way, you can’t hypnotize me. I’ve heard the horror stories,” Vince protests.  “People getting hypnotized and never waking up. Thinking you’re a chicken your whole life. Or a glass of milk. No way.”_
> 
> _“I’m only certified to read the future,” Naboo says. “I really think you need a licensed psychotherapist to help you with your fixation on the past. That’s not really a shaman type of problem.”_
> 
> _“You use magic to avoid dealing with your abnormal psychology, and bad things happen,” Bollo grunts._
> 
> _“I’m wondering why it’s easier for you to believe that we woke up in a pile of camping equipment and wearing each other’s pants because we [were doing something ridiculous, improv this bit] than because we… you know…”_
> 
> _“Don’t be ridiculous, Howard. You’re not my type,” Vince dismisses. “Just look at you!”_
> 
> _“If you’re so sure then why you won’t let Naboo hypnotize you into remembering?”_
> 
> _“No, that’s because I’m scared of hypnotism. Always freaked me out, ever since I was a wee thing.”_
> 
> _“You fear hypnotism because you’re shallow and easily suggestible and you lie a lot.”_
> 
> _“Those are all valid reasons to fear hypnotism!”_
> 
> _Howard convinces Vince to get hypnotized by being a surly bastard, etc_
> 
>  
> 
> _After the hypnotism: “I’ve seen things that can never be unseen,” Naboo says, holding his head in his hands. “And the thing with the thing? You know the thing I mean. I feel like I keep saying this, but… You guys need to see a licensed psychotherapist for help with that thing.”_
> 
> _“We’ve all seen things that cannot be unseen,” Vince says glumly._
> 
> _“We’ve all seen terrible things,” Howard moans in agreement,  beating his face in his fists as though he thinks he may be able to block it out if he hits hard enough. He is unsuccessful._
> 
>  
> 
> _Montage: Vince and Howard ignore each other and they are clearly lost. Howard’s hair is growing extra fast. It is now down to his shoulders. Vince burns the tea and wears the same clothes three days in a row._
> 
>  
> 
> _The next thing they know, the boys are being kidnapped to Xooberon for an intervention._
> 
> _“We are holding you an intervention,” Bollo informs them._
> 
> _“Last time I checked, and intervention wasn’t the same thing as a kidnapping us and putting us on trial in some weird shamanistic version of The People’s Court,” Howard protests. Vince nods with enthusiastic agreement._
> 
> _“You two need to kiss and make up. You’re making us miserable with all the unresolved sexual tension,” Naboo sniped._
> 
> _“It terrible,” Bollo moans. “Whole apartment smells like ballbag.”_
> 
> _“And that’s why we have gathered before you today to begin this intervention with the ritual airing of grievances,” Saboo announces, and the shamans begin the ritual in earnest._
> 
> _“Howard, first, let me get this out of the way: we hate you.”_
> 
> _“You are boring and you have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”_
> 
> _“Vince, you’re shallow but you’d be OK if you weren’t obsessed with Howard.”_
> 
> _“But you are, so we find you annoying most of the time.”_
> 
> _“You hang out all the time and then in the rare moments that life’s circumstances tear you apart you only ever want to talk about each other. What Howard said this, what Vince did that.”_
> 
> _“We don’t care.”_
> 
> _“We never cared.”_
> 
> _“It’s awful and we hate it.”_
> 
> _“We don’t even like doing it. We only do it because we pity you.”_
> 
> _“Yeah, you really need to go back to hanging out with each other more so we have to hang out with you less.”_
> 
> _“That would be really good. For us.”_
> 
> _“The most desirable outcome for everyone. For you, but also mostly for us.”_
> 
> _Howard looks at Vince, who is biting his lip and looking equal parts apologetic and terrified, before answering…._

 

Julian was fidgeting with the biro, still watching Noel read. His eyes were sparkling with mischief by the time he looked up from the last scrawled page. It was Julian’s favorite look on him.

“I was wondering what happened to this,” Noel teased. His eyes sparkled though his voice was low and serious. “I’d nearly convinced myself I dreamed it.”

“Well, it’s real,” Julian admitted, fiddling a bit more with the biro. “I might have hidden it, a little bit.”

Noel huffed and turned back a few pages, rereading something that must have caught his imagination. His fingers lingered on the pages, which made Julian shiver and think about the electricity that Noel leaked from his fingertips, flowing into the page. It still felt like a caress. “The ending’s not much, tho, innit?” he murmured, worrying the creased edge of the page with his thumbnail.

“It’s not finished. I don’t know how it ends,” Julian said. He flicked to an empty space at the bottom of the last page and passed the biro to Noel. “But I was hoping you’d be able to help me figure it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your kudos and comments! I've had a blast getting to meet some other Booshophiles.
> 
> PS: Julian's expat? I'm totally headcanoning him as David Sedaris. #slashysensesactivated

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to DB, my very first cycling coach and avid Mighty Boosh fan, who will never read this because he's dead of suicide. But if he had never named me his executor, I'd never have taken the two weeks off work to watch all his Boosh DVDs on repeat, wallow in my existential angst and write. 
> 
> Also inspired by Julian Barratt's show Flowers, which is the worst most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Well worth a watch if you've ever known anyone with a mental illness.
> 
> Just a reminder I'm looking for a beta reader/brainstorming buddy to help me whip the second half of this fic into shape. Please reach out to me @the-stoned-ranger on Tumblr, gmail me @blackmountainbonea (yes, I know it's a typo, I was drunk), or leave a comment with your preferred contact info below if you wanna help out. All kudos and comments feed the muse (she's terrible) and are much appreciated!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I hope it was worth it.


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